Many of you will have seen articles and social media posts about ChatGPT over the last month. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot made by a company called OpenAI, which is able to respond to natural language input.

This means that it can give advice and help you to write many different things, including essays, emails, marketing campaigns and poetry. It is freely available online if you would like to explore it. Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of news articles focusing on
its ability to produce entire essays that achieve good grades, which has created considerable interest and unease in the education sector. There has been a wide range of responses to this, ranging from curious and excited to terrified and pessimistic (for example, New York has banned the use of it in schools).

At Halcyon, we are taking a curious, optimistic and critical approach. We know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t going anywhere and that students will need to know how to work with it and use it as a co-creator in the future. We also know that despite many hasty efforts to fire-fight by building ‘AI detectors’ and banning ChatGPT in schools, this approach is unlikely to work in the long term.

There are new AI tools being introduced on a daily basis which will continue to get more sophisticated and undetectable. Instead of seeing AI as a threat, we hope to:

- Teach students how to work with AI, see its amazing creative potential and use it where appropriate

- Help students to see the value in the process of creating something themselves, rather than just in a finished product and a grade

- Think critically about AI and its impact on society, now and in the future - allowing students to develop AI literacy as a part of the digital literacy curriculum.

The nature of some assignments and time pressures may mean that despite our best efforts to encourage the positive use of AI, we may also need to set some boundaries with students for how and when it is appropriate to use it. We are already in collaboration with students to find fair and positive solutions.

We are not quite sure what the future (or even the next year) will bring in terms of AI, but as a school that encourages innovation and aims to prepare students for the future, we are excited to explore it with students. We would also love to hear any parent feedback about ChatGPT and AI and how you feel it might impact students or your workplace.