PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The School District of Philadelphia has joined New York City, Seattle and other districts in blocking access to the increasingly popular artificial intelligence program ChatGPT over concerns that students may use it to cheat.
ChatGPT is a user-friendly online program that creates compositions that sound like they were written by humans. Enter a few prompts, and the online program quickly turns out complex compositions on demand.
District Superintendent Tony Watlington said while he doesn’t know of any instances where Philadelphia students tried to pass off ChatGPT’s work as their own, the district is now preventing anyone from accessing the site on school computers.
“We’ve had no complaints or concerns raised here locally in Philadelphia. Our district, however, has blocked access on our Chromebooks and internal computers,” Watlington told KYW Newsradio Thursday.
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“We want to teach our kids to be good writers and communicate in a way that’s not plagiarism, and we think that it’s not helpful to the students or the school district."
Some educators say in some situations, the text-generating program could be a useful educational tool — like using a calculator in math class.
Watlington, though, said he doesn’t see any redeeming value to ChatGPT in schools.
“Certainly it’s appropriate to make sure that kids don’t have access to things that won’t be helpful,” he said. “What little I know so far, I don’t see much redeeming value.”
