Humble ISD trustees approved a deal to use OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT for K-12 educators in a pilot program at the board’s Feb. 17 meeting.
The details
HISD Chief Financial Officer Billy Beattie said the AI program will be used to help teachers and staff with a variety of tasks, including:
Creating discussion promptsDeveloping study guidesDrafting emailsAnalyzing student data“It’s really not so much a question of should we use AI, but it’s really about how do we responsibly and safely utilize AI for the benefit of our students,” Beattie said.
A closer look
Beattie said the program should be able to save staff time with tasks, such as analyzing attendance reports.
“I can only imagine the time and effort it takes for a lot of those tasks,” Beattie said. “Whereas, if you had a safe and secure environment, you could plug that into ChatGPT and let it do all the analysis in 30 seconds.”
According to OpenAI’s website, the program is also capable of personalizing teacher support based on grade level, curriculum and preferred teaching styles.
Beattie also noted the data involved would not be shared with other districts and would not be used by OpenAI to train its own AI models.
“Our data is inside our workspace and isolated in our workspace, so there’s no outside learning on our data,” Beattie said. “Our data is safe and secure.”
What’s next
Moving forward, Beattie said staff will soon begin training on AI literacy and ethics, designing instructional plans, and streamlining planning and workflow.
Beattie noted the district will test the software until 2027, when OpenAI will stop offering the program for free. After the trial period ends, Beattie said the district will decide whether it will pay for the program moving forward or opt to try programs from other AI developers.