Looking at your teacher’s guided notes sheets, you see an awfully familiar font and style of writing that isn’t your teacher’s normal font choice. You think long and hard about where you have seen it, but you are unable to recall. Later, you pull out ChatGPT on your iPad to elaborate on the complicated concept your teacher had just explained. Gasping, you look from your teacher’s notes to your iPad screen, piecing together the puzzle that you never expected to be true: your teacher used ChatGPT.

Don’t get me wrong, artificial intelligence (AI) is an incredibly useful tool. Both teachers and students may or may not use it; however, the limits placed for these two groups are very different. In classes, students are very rarely allowed to use AI to help them complete assignments. Despite this limit imposed on students, teachers can use AI whenever they want in their curriculum, and reasonably so with the experience teachers have over students. Teachers are educated on their own curriculum, they are not the ones learning it, so using AI doesn’t deter from their education.

However, the problem arises when teachers completely restrict students from using AI in classes, yet they use it themselves to assist their workload of grading, creating coursework, etc. With over a fourth of teachers nationwide catching students cheating by using AI, according to a survey by Study.com, teachers often deter students from any kind of use. However, I worry that teachers may begin to use AI to replace too many aspects of their work including grading, presentations, and coursework creation.

For example, in English classes, using AI has had no tolerance because using AI platforms to generate entire essays is not indicative of the student’s true writing level and skills. To encourage student mastery without the writing of other technology, ChatGPT in English classes is completely restricted when it comes to writing, as without these restrictions, students don’t actually demonstrate their growth in the understanding of the criteria; not using AI allows students to maximize their own potential as a student, rather than relying on a mind that isn’t their own.

The same can be said when teachers use AI to create coursework and make presentations. At the end of the day, if a robot is teaching us too, is it really unfair if we write with a robot? Sure, teachers already know the curriculum—hence why they lead the class—but down the line, when people claim AI prevents students from being learners—which is their role—the same argument occurs for teachers, as they no longer grow as teachers either. The reason so many students love to learn is because of how their teachers present their information. Regardless of the subject, when a teacher is engaged in their class, their care is far more impactful to a student’s success than any type of content AI can create.

That isn’t to say that AI is not helpful for educational purposes. Several AI tools for teachers specifically have been used to help the curriculum. For instance, in several language classes, the AI platform Magic School, provides instant feedback on formative assessments or practices to give students an idea about how to improve. For practice, these tools are useful, especially because real teacher feedback isn’t necessary when the assessment is formative. While using AI to grade formative assessments can still be unreliable, it is a way to add to teacher feedback, not replace it.

However, on real tests, teachers using AI tools to replace their grading can be detrimental to students’ learning, as AI is quite unreliable and oftentimes inaccurate in following the learning targets established by teachers. When teachers grade, they are aware of exactly what they are looking for in a student’s assignment but, when AI is given criteria, it isn’t as knowledgeable about what the teacher is looking for just based on a 4-sentence summary of the target, resulting in an inaccurate graded assessment.

According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Learning Center, “an AI grading system, no matter how sophisticated, may struggle to fully grasp the nuances, originality, and real-world feasibility of a student’s strategic vision.” For certain classes, like art or English, using AI tools to grade creative assignments isn’t as effective as grading, say, a math test, as art and English are far more subjective.

In subjects like math, when there is usually one right and numerical answer, using a machine to grade is understandable, as the answer is either correct or incorrect. However, even then, the different areas where a student may have made mistakes in solving the problem could be lost. In summative, grade determining assessments, assessing using a machine is unrealistic as human interpretation of a student’s growth, thinking, and understanding is crucial.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether a teacher is using AI, being upfront about usage sets an example for generations to come. Teachers have hard jobs and using AI appropriately doesn’t hurt anyone. All I ask is that teachers be transparent with their students rather than hide the help of these tools from them. And please, please grade our most important assessments so we better understand how to do better.