ChatGPT Disrupts Education

regarding school zone signs, I noticed that, not only is the Tully and Fern intersection dangerous, but all of the intersections around Thornwood are.

I find it unfair how not every school in our school district has been granted the same safety precautions as the others.

I believe that this lack of signage could spark change for all Spring Branch students. Everyone should be guaranteed the same resources, opportunities, and most importantly, safety when going to and from school.

I urge you to contact the City of Houston and SBISD to request better signage at this intersection. I urge you to dig deeper into your surroundings, and ask yourself, “what can I do to ensure that every child has the same opportunities?”

I hope that one day all students in SBISD are able to have access to the same opportunities and benefit from equal safety preventative measures in order to ensure that SBISD really is “For every child.”

School districts are banning the advanced AI platform over cheating concerns

WRITTENBYNATHANSEELIG(12)

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new, high-powered chatbot, has already become a source of excitement and controversy in the short time since it was released in November.

ChatGPT, which can do a wide array of tasks, from solving advanced physics equations to generating five-page essays in a matter of seconds, has been met with concerns that students may use it to cheat on assignments.

Darren Hicks, assistant professor of philosophy at Furman University, believes that proving AI-generated plagiarism will be especially difficult.

“In more traditional forms of plagiarism – cheating off the internet, copy-pasting stuff – I can go and find additional proof, evidence that I can then bring into a board hearing,” he said.

“In this case, there’s nothing out there that I can point to and say, ‘Here’s the material they took.’”

“It’s really a new form of an old problem where students would pay somebody or get somebody to write their paper for them – say an essay farm or a friend that has taken a course before,” Hicks added.

SBISD and many other school systems, including the entire New York City Public School network, took swift action and banned the bot shortly after it was introduced.

SBISD Associate Superintendent of Technology Christina Masick explained the ban in a brief statement.

“Earlier this school year, campus administrators and the Academics department requested SBISD Technology Services to block ChatGPT. According to ChatGPT’s Terms of Use, users of ChatGPT must be 18 years or older,” Masick said.

“Additional legal security concerns were raised after reviewing ChatGPT’s Privacy Policy. As such, the Technology Services department took immediate action to temporarily block ChatGPT.”

English teacher Charlotte McHale agrees with the ban but is more concerned about how ChatGPT will impact students’ approach to learning than potential cheating.

“I check all my students’ papers through [GPTZero],” said McHale, referencing an app designed by Princeton student Edward Tian that aims to detect AI-generated material.

“It’s pretty clear when a student has used [ChatGPT],” McHale continued, “but I worry more that kids will rely on it instead of doing hard work.”

“Students will need the skills taught in high school for the rest of their lives, and I worry that they won’t develop them properly with ChatGPT,” McHale added, comparing the use of ChatGPT in high school assignments to giving an elementary school student a calculator before they have mastered their multiplication tables.