“I love using AI.” For Yash Maheshwari, a junior at Mountain View High School, there are the benefits of deeply incorporating the use of artificial intelligence into his schoolwork. From generating practice tests to utilizing chatbots to teach confusing topics, Maheshwari even joined the MVHS Tech Interns to promote the positive impacts of AI.
But even Maheshwari understands the need for AI guidelines in schools.
Since ChatGPT was first released to the public three years ago, the use of AI has rapidly advanced. Though AI can be used to accelerate a student’s learning abilities, the negative results of AI usage are evident. A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers on June 20 found that participants who exclusively used AI to help write essays showed reduced brain activity and memory.
To address the issue, Mountain View — Los Altos Union High School District Superintendent Eric Volta approached Dr. Kip Glazer, the principal of MVHS. Glazer has spoken at multiple AI conferences, acted as a guest editor on Literary Today in their literary and AI evolution edition and contributed to an AI insight and recommendations report issued by the Department of Education in May 2023.
Glazer has used a three-series workshop to facilitate discussion within a professional setting and has applied this strategy to bring teachers, administrators, parents and students across middle school and high school together to debate and draft an AI philosophy.
“You can see what we did from day one, day two and day three — it spirals, which is important so that we are hearing from a variety of voices,” Glazer said.
Throughout the AI Philosophy project, the Tech Interns worked together to lead activities and discussions. The Tech Interns are a group of 25 MVHS students that Glazer assembled to collaborate and work on different projects, including the AI Philosophy.
Each of the Tech Interns brings unique skill sets and knowledge in technology which they use to advance the projects they work on. Though the concept was derived by Glazer, the Tech Interns took a hands-on role in guiding conversations and developing activities to encourage brainstorming ideas for the philosophy amongst the groups.
Glazer created this group to “empower students to become confident leaders and innovators by providing opportunities to build valuable skills in technology, public speaking and event planning,” according to her website.
By allowing the Tech Interns to take a leadership role in the creation of an AI Philosophy, administrators are giving students more power over their education. Student associate bodies act as a universal way for students to voice opinions. However, the MVLA school district is taking it one step further by giving them the reins.
“I think that having a student perspective is exceptionally important, just due to the unique perspectives that everybody brings,” Maheshwari said. “How students currently view AI, use AI and want to use AI in the future is very different from what teachers are looking at.”
Verde was not given access to a copy of the AI Philosophy. According to interviews with the Tech Interns, the AI Philosophy acts as a set of values rather than strict rules that teachers and students must follow so that the philosophy is more usable for other schools.
One of the philosophy’s purposes is to inform students on AI usage, as well as to protect their data and create an environment where students understand AI to prevent them from using it in the wrong way.
The AI Philosophy is a completed document that is not currently implemented in classrooms. However, in late November, the Tech Interns presented their AI Philosophy to hopefully be approved by the school board for use in Los Altos School District K-8 classrooms.
The philosophy isn’t focused on rules regarding AI usage directly, and Maheshwari is happy with this outcome.
“One thing I love is we didn’t go into specific policy,” Maheshwari said. “We didn’t say this tool should or should not be allowed. We talked about the values we wanted to keep in mind.”
Glazer said the students had to go through a small process to become Tech Interns.
“They [the students] did apply, and it’s more like an interest survey to see if they will be interested in serving the community with their skills,” Glazer said. “We try to make sure that they know that it’s not really about high levels of coding or technology as much as leadership.”
The workshops, which Glazer organized, were student run and were developed in a way that gave students an easy way to voice their opinions. This ensured the policy did not stem solely from what administrators desired, but also ideas students believed were paramount.
Dhruv Vijay, a senior and Tech Intern, helped guide discussions during the three workshops.
“Students are less inclined to, or younger students, are less inclined to speak up, especially when the rest of the room are their parents, their teachers and admin,” Vijay said. “I think we bridged that gap by designing role-playing activities that really brought them into discussion and allowed them to reach that level of depth that we wanted them to reach in these discussions.”
The collaborative experience taught him the benefits of hearing from a range of perspectives. This included amplifying voices of younger peers through workshops and discussions.
“Getting the perspectives of administrators, especially [K-8] administrators, and also parents who are also concerned, was definitely very rewarding, because oftentimes these philosophy statements that we create, the largest audience are the parents,” Vijay said.
The entire project focused heavily on collaboration, and Maheshwari said he was proud of the participants ideas.
“Everybody was able to contribute in their own way,” Maheshwari said. “And I heard a lot of unique ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of individually.”
Grace Choi, the Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction at MVLA, continues to work closely with the Tech Interns. Looking ahead, the Tech Interns will attend national education conferences to share their AI Philosophy process with other school districts.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Choi said. “This is one of the first steps.”