On Tuesday, March 6, a math AI site known as MathGPT was recently blocked on all school issued student chromebooks. MathGPT was frequently used by students as a way to help them with work that they were unsure of or needed a helping hand to get through in order to better learn the material.
“I have used AI to help me with complicated math problems I needed help with, said Nathan Voelker, a pre-calculus student at Morgan. I used it to explain and break down how the equation was solved.”
The reasoning behind the site being blocked was that it violated many data privacy regulations the school had in place. According to Frank Rossi, the head of the IT department of the Clinton school district, “Some of these companies/sites have no regard for data privacy, or reside outside of the United States meaning they’re not subject to our Federal safeguards. What does that mean for our CPS students and teachers? Basically our filtering is designed to block “everything” associated with AI so that we could ensure students and teachers are using vetted, safe, and somewhat reliable/consistent tools.”
The first major issue teachers have with AI is the reliability and whether or not it will actually show the correct way to work out a problem to students. For example quadratic equations have multiple different ways to be solved be it factoring or using the quadratic formula, AI might show students a method that they aren’t practicing.
When referring to a student trying to use AI to get help with a problem, Connor Moran, a math teacher at Morgan said “The AI went right to the quadratic formula because that’s pretty like tried and true or like straight every quadratic. Yeah. But I didn’t teach them that yet,”
Despite the possibility for misuse, AI does still have its upsides. Let’s talk about a huge benefit. AI shows you step-by-step how to solve the problem, so if you get stuck or hung up on any step of a problem, AI can help, especially for things like late night homework where you need help immediately and can’t email a teacher and wait for a response.
Although the school district has prohibited the use of AI to complete all work for the majority of courses. It makes an exception for math based courses.
The district AI policy reads, “Students may use AI tools at home to show them how to solve a problem, but students are responsible for writing down the steps and understanding the process so that they are learning to solve the problem without the use of AI. AI will not be permitted within any assessments.”
The reasoning behind this, according to the policy is “some students rely on these tools to help explain how to solve a problem in the absence of a tutor or a friend/parent who can help them. “
Even though it is a helpful tool, and is permitted by the district, there is the big elephant in the room to address, why not just have AI do all the work for you? We all know that it could be abused in this way so at the moment it is just a matter of the honor system.
Julien Milcent, a math teacher at Morgan had addressed this issue saying “I think that students who are gonna take their learning a little more seriously are more likely to use AI responsibly.”
However that doesn’t mean the end of using AI as a study tool. There already are AI algorithms in development to help students work through problems without giving them the answers which have the potential to be a very effective assistant.
“They’re teaching us, like our professional development at school right now, how to code AI that we could assign students to use for math class that’s not supposed to give them the answer,” said Moran.
While AI has the potential for misuse, it’s good to see that all students, teachers, and the school district alike are promoting the use of it as a study tool and there are efforts underway to develop methods of a study specific AI tool for helping students.
“I think that the use of AI should be allowed and advocated for if used as a tool. It is a very gray area but I think if people use it as intended it can really help education” said Voelker.
