Today, AI has more impact on school life than it did even five years ago. AI has been gaining knowledge along with students gaining more awareness of websites like ChatGPT that can help them with their work. This leads to schools putting policies in place to counteract the things AI chatbots are generating for students.

School policies for academic honesty and AI go hand-in-hand, and students from multiple schools agree that if AI use is subject to disciplinary consequences, it falls under academic dishonesty.

Looking at SPA, Maple Grove High School–a public school, and Blake–a private school, the policies for each school, whether written or unwritten, are very similar.

Sophomore Margaret Bonin, who attends SPA, believes that AI should be used as a generator for ideas but the final product should be one from the student.

“If anything, it should be used as a tool,” she said, “kind of like making flashcards.”

The upper school student handbook states that it is dishonest to submit work that is not your own. AI is able to generate many things including essay drafts, but it lacks the spark for learning that high school students have, leading it to become obvious when students use it for essays or projects at school.

Hazel Alexander, a sophomore at Blake, said that if someone used AI, it would diminish their skills to write in their own words which would sabotage them in the future, say at college.

“I feel like it prevents you from building the skills necessary to do things yourself,” she said.

Alexander thinks that ChatGPT is actually dumb and cannot write a legitimate essay. She believes that using AI \ creates more work for the student.

Genevieve Maass, a junior at Maple Grove High School, touched on how she believes AI should be used in schools in the future.

Maass said, “I hope it’s used for information gathering and retainment.”

AI can be a great study resource as it can find lots of information on whatever it is that someone is learning, and while Maass acknowledges that generative AI is a powerful tool, it should only be used in certain situations.

Academic honesty at schools ties directly into AI use and students using it to cheat on tests or to write papers for them. It is sometimes easy to spot in essays; still, AI isn’t something that should be seen as bad.