In the hushed corridors of education, a silent revolution is underway, one that blends human ingenuity with artificial intelligence’s boundless potential.

With new technology, schools are testing the waters for a curriculum where Artificial Intelligence (AI) serves as an important tool for educators and where the boundaries of what’s achievable are constantly expanding.

Even this very introduction was written in part by ChatGPT 3.5.

The release of AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Bard, has both students and teachers weighing efficiency and ethicality in the classroom.

But Kathryn Esparza, English Department Chair, believes human authorship will prevail.

“Just as AI cannot replace the human touch in artistic endeavors, it will never be able to completely replace human writing,” Esparza said. “We need the experience of writing and creating art to help the writer and the artist to process thinking and to share completely human emotions.”

According to Victor Balderas, AP English teacher, the shortcomings are hard to ignore and it is impossible for AI to provide students the same learning experience that human teaching can.

“If you’re going to a job interview and you don’t know the words your interviewer’s saying, you don’t tell them to pause to check Google; you use context clues and body language to articulate your own thoughts,” Balderas said.

For Esparza, AI comes up short in replicating the human spirit as well.

“Everyone has their own voice that is apparent through their word choice and sentence patterns,” Esparza said. “AI sounds artificial and superficial because it is not an actual person with an emotional investment in the writing.”

Both teachers agreed that they trust their ability to recognize their students’ writing over Turnitin, the website CFISD uses for essay submissions.

The long-term effects of using AI in education remain to be seen, but we can already see a shift to embracing the technology at schools in Georgia or Boston, where AI is embedded into the curriculum to solve real-world problems using AI’s data analysis tools.

On the other hand, Esparza sees the potential of incorporating AI into the curriculum.

“If a student struggles to understand a reading, AI can help,” Esparza said. “If a teacher is struggling with how to say something or struggling to write a rubric or test question, AI can help. People like shortcuts but don’t understand the long-term implications of taking them.”

AI presents a wealth of possibilities for students and teachers, but Balderas urges caution

“We don’t realize what we’re letting go of, and we might not realize that until it’s too late,” Balderas said.