Navigating the Future: The Role of Generative AI at Hackley
By Stephen Fitzpatrick, History Teacher and Director of Debate, Hackley School
OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, dropped in late November of 2022 and immediately became the fastest app to reach 100 million users, producing thousands of thought pieces and striking fear into the hearts of educators everywhere.
Here at Hackley, the initial alarm over generative AI has subsided this fall. No doubt students continue to use AI tools, but most have avoided handing in AI-generated material. Teachers remain understandably wary and are still figuring out how to use AI productively.
As a result of my fascination with AI, I received a summer iGrant with the intent of exploring all facets of generative AI and its implications for teaching and learning. For the past six months, I have experimented and signed up for almost every AI tool publicly available, spending many hours playing with a variety of platforms and software. I’ve extensively researched the merits and perils of generative AI through blog posts, books and academic papers. I’ve taken multiple online and in-person courses and AI workshops run by teachers, college professors and business experts. During our November professional development day, I shared with Hackley faculty my insights and demonstrated some of the most common-use cases and popular AI tools available, including text generation, image generation and presentation generation.
Based on my work to date, I have three major takeaways:
First, the generative AI landscape is accelerating so quickly that it is difficult to keep up with the latest developments. Significant breakthroughs and improvements are likely to be announced by the time this piece is published. While ChatGPT has driven the conversation, many other tools that incorporate generative AI are freely available for both teachers and students. And while text generation may be the primary concern for teachers, students can now create images, music, presentations, voices and video all through simple natural language prompts. Though these technologies are in their infancy, the likelihood they will get better and more capable in the months and years ahead is almost guaranteed.
Second, as a corollary, generative AI has profound implications for all aspects of teaching and learning. AI technology predictions are wildly divergent. Some experts fear AI will become so powerful that it poses an existential risk to humanity. Others focus on the positive, claiming it will increase efficiency, solve intractable global problems, and exert a net benefit for human development and growth. Regardless, almost all share the feeling that we are on the cusp of something transformational. How and under what circumstances generative AI affects the day to day education of K-12 students is unclear, but that it has the potential to have a disruptive impact is almost certain.
Finally, both educators and students are unprepared for the changes that are coming. The standard education model in which students produce their own work for teachers to evaluate and give feedback can be radically altered by the capabilities of generative AI. In the best-case scenario, students and teachers will work together exploring how these tools can augment and facilitate learning. More likely, the use of AI in schools will proceed in fits and starts, with students leading the way by experimenting and forcing teachers and schools to react. Educational institutions are notoriously resistant to change. Already, the overwhelming focus on AI cases of plagiarism, while predictable, seems at best a short-term solution. As hybrid AI-human writing becomes more and more common, what we think of as plagiarism may need to be redefined. My biggest surprise has been how few students and teachers seem to be aware of the changes looming on the horizon. The need for AI literacy is paramount.
What is a school to do? For independent schools like ours that have the ability to shape and control our environment more efficiently than public schools operating within a more bureaucratic framework, opportunities abound. Pilot programs can be set up, data collected and feedback implemented. Teachers should share success stories and discuss their comfort levels regarding AI use with students and each other. Already, progress is being made as some teachers are venturing forward and introducing these tools in their classrooms.
In our Independent Research in History class, Mr. King and I have used AI to help generate ideas, brainstorm topics and suggest further direction in connection with student research proposals. I have used AI to assist with our debate team, creating and refining arguments, analyzing argument structure, and assessing the strength and impact of arguments in our various formats. As an experiment, I’ve had AI complete every assignment I have given this fall to compare its results to student work. While students still have the upper hand in their ability to analyze and synthesize ideas and incorporate them into written responses, I can envision a future where AI is able to create and review transcripts of class discussions and, in connection with assigned readings, eventually surpass what most students are capable of producing. Outside my own subject, the applications of generative AI in computer science, art, music, foreign language and science are likely to be equally transformative.
While there can be a fine line between independent idea generation and an overreliance on AI, that line is likely to become blurrier in the years ahead. Nevertheless, the benefits of generative AI, particularly for students with learning differences, is substantial. Rewriting text into more accessible reading levels, allowing students to “interact” with readings for feedback and to ask follow-up questions are just a few of the ways AI will assist in learning. And with the speed in which new features are being introduced, such as the ability to analyze and produce images, code and other forms of media, projecting what future generative AI use is going to look like in even the next six to 18 months is indeed frightening.
There is no question that there is a lot of hype surrounding generative AI at the moment. Bold predictions about disruptive technology in edtech have generally disappointed. And there are real downsides to the technology as it presently exists — the tendency to “hallucinate” incorrect information, questions involving equity of access as it develops, and the lack of transparency regarding the data on which these large language models are being trained are just a few. But in my three decades of teaching, I have never been as excited and fascinated with the potential for a technology to transform education as I am with generative AI. The true test for Hackley will be not just how well we integrate this technology into our daily practice, but whether we can reimagine what teaching and learning can look like by providing cutting-edge AI literacy within our community. Whether or not schools embrace generative AI to assist with student learning is almost beside the point — in a world in which every other aspect of our daily lives will be affected by AI, schools that successfully harness its potential while curbing its misuse will have a significant advantage training their students for an AI-dominated future in the coming decades over those that don’t.
Stephen Fitzpatrick, director of Debate at Hackley since 1995, has an extensive educational background, including degrees in history and law, and has taught various subjects alongside coaching multiple sports and academic teams. During his tenure, Mr. Fitzpatrick has played a pivotal role in curriculum development, debate program expansion in the tri-state area and launching several debate-related initiatives, including the East Coast High School Public Debate League and the Debate Centered Instruction program. Additionally, Mr. Fitzpatrick is involved in innovative educational projects, such as the Harvard Case Method Project and Hackley’s committee on Generative Artificial Intelligence, reflecting his commitment to evolving pedagogical approaches and AI literacy in education.
