Schools Should Go Back to Basics to Mitigate Effects of AI

Commentary
Odds are, you can’t tell whether this sentence was written by artificial intelligence. Schools across Canada face the same problem. And happily, some are finding simple solutions.
Manitoba’s Franco-Manitoban School Division (Division scolaire franco-manitobaine) recently issued new AI guidelines for teachers: to only assign optional homework and reading in grades kindergarten to 6, and limit homework in grades 7 to 12. The reason? The proliferation of generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT make it very difficult for teachers, juggling a heavy workload, to discern genuine student work from AI-generated text. In fact, according to the school’s superintendent, Alain Laberge, “Most of the [after-school assignment] submissions, we find, are coming from AI, to be quite honest.”…