How artificial intlligence is changing schools

SYOSSET, New York (WABC) -- Days before school returns, hundreds of teachers on Long Island listened and learned.

"We're excited to be here to share some of the initial work that we were able to do with AI at the time of this pilot," teacher Tyler Gentilcore said.

Gentilcore was among dozens of educators with the Syosset School District sharing their approach to teaching artificial intelligence in the classroom.

"It feels pretty cool to be on the forefront of something new like this," he said.

Gentilcore teaches first grade at Robbins Lane Elementary School.

"They're little so the pilot was really an opportunity for teachers to engage with different AI programs," he explained.

Programs like Google's Gemini are now being used by teachers in the classroom, including Syosset High School English teacher Caroline Polatsidis.

"It was just scary because I was worried that students wouldn't be learning anymore, that they would be letting AI do the work for them, but now I see that we need to harness this great power," Polatsidis said.

What about cheating? A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that a quarter of teenagers nationwide have used the app ChatGPT for schoolwork.

Most felt it was wrong to use the advanced AI to write essays and solve math problems.

"I actually think people here in this high school use AI to help them with their assignments, but in ways that our teachers actually condone," NiKhil Shah, Syossett High School senior, said.

"We don't have any other choice but to do it now. AI is moving at a pace. The world is moving at a pace faster frankly than we can educate our kids," Syosset Schools Assistant Superintendent David Steinberg said.

It's not just the teachers who are embracing using AI in the classroom. Many students are too.

"I really started to understand AI in high school as some of my teachers introduced it to me and kind of started to guide us on how to use AI," Shah explained.

Shah said using AI in school was introduced last year in his Spanish class.

"We would record speaking in Spanish. In order to improve the way we spoke, we would submit it to AI. It would analyze it and show us where we made mistakes, where we could improve," he said.

Some students are skeptical.

"Personally, I never really was a fan of AI just because of the environmental costs it has," senior Janice Opal Kang said.

According to the United Nations, the growing number of data centers that house AI servers use massive amounts of electricity, spurring the emission of global warming greenhouse gases.

Back in the classroom, AI is not only transitioning in schools on Long Island. Teachers at St. Benedict's Prep Catholic School in Newark, New Jersey, are navigating the new world, too.

"It's really forcing us to reevaluate what it is that we're teaching and how we're assessing what kids have learned. It's really a pretty transformational thing," teacher Trevor Shaw said.

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