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Artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT, Grok, and others haven’t been around that long, but their popularity has absolutely skyrocketed, and it is easy to see why. While nobody would argue that they are perfect, they are able to perform some amazing tasks and serve as a great resource to people in a variety of situations.

Many industries are trying to find the right balance when it comes to how and when AI should be used. With most companies, this is just going to be a matter of trial and error. When a company gets it wrong, they will suffer and at worst, go out of business. For the education industry, however, the stakes are much higher. If schools don’t handle AI properly, it could result in millions of young people finding themselves at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives.

On the one hand, schools want to make sure that their students are actually learning (and, perhaps more importantly, learning HOW to learn) rather than just pasting an assignment into ChatGPT and turning in whatever it spits out. On the other hand, there is almost no doubt that AI is here to stay, so failing to teach students how to effectively use it is going to be equally debilitating.

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On top of that, there is the question of how educators and administrators should use AI.

It is clear that AI tools can help complete a lot of tasks much more quickly, which frees up teachers to actually teach. In a world where there aren’t enough teachers to go around, this could be a critical resource. The potential problem, however, is that when AI gets something wrong, it does so very confidently, which can lead to many other issues. For example, many teachers use AI to grade papers, which in theory should be fine. When the AI does it incorrectly, however, the students will notice and feel betrayed. When students lose confidence in their teachers, they often lose the desire to learn.

The New York Times reported on how schools are using AI for various things including grading papers, tutoring students, and much more. There are even some tools available that will monitor the grades, behavior reports, and even social media activity of students and publish reports to the administrators to try to catch at-risk students and get them help.

While this obviously has a lot of potential to do good for the students, it can also feel like a major overstep when it comes to privacy and providing students with the attention from real people that they may need.

On top of that, there are real concerns with schools telling students that they are not allowed to use AI for their assignments, but then the teachers are using AI for their work. This topic is filled with nuance, but it is easy to see how students would think of this as a double standard.

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Unfortunately, AI is advancing much more quickly than schools, and it is the students that are being left behind. Fortunately, some schools are at least making an effort to find the right balance. For example, prohibiting the use of AI for certain activities, but also offering classes that specifically teach students how to use AI for other activities.

Mistakes will undoubtedly be made, but as long as schools are willing to adopt this technology and guide the students on how to ethically use it, they will benefit in the end.

If you enjoyed that story, check out what happened when a guy gave ChatGPT $100 to make as money as possible, and it turned out exactly how you would expect.

School leaders in England are having to double up as caretakers and lollipop men and women as funding “hits rock bottom”, teaching unions have said.

Others are having to call on relatives to help fix crumbling buildings and do other odd jobs after years of “inadequate” funding for schools, they said.

Seven in 10 schools are struggling with real-terms cuts to their budgets since 2010 – 1,200 more than last year – according to the Stop School Cuts coalition, which has been monitoring school funding levels for almost a decade.

Research by the coalition, which is made up of three education unions, school governors and a parents’ charity, found more than 1,000 schools had suffered cumulative real-terms cuts in excess of £1m each, with Essex, Birmingham and Kent among the hardest hit areas.

Despite “some welcome funding this year”, the Labour government has failed to reverse a historic decline in spending as a proportion of GDP at a time when schools are struggling to deal with the rising cost of maintaining crumbling buildings, special educational needs, staffing, and food and energy costs, the coalition said.

Chris Ashley-Jones, the executive headteacher of Hitherfield primary school in south London, is having to double up as a lollipop man because he has insufficient support staff to fill the role. He has also just taken on the role of designated safeguarding lead.

“This year things have got as bad as I’ve seen in my nearly 20 years of headship,” he said. “Across schools in Lambeth I’m seeing exhausted staff, morale is low and we are seeing more and more dilapidated school buildings across the borough.

“In my school we have had to cut pretty much all areas of support staff and services, from additional language to mental health. We are relying on our parent-teacher association for reading books, playground equipment and more.”

Claire Wilson, the head of Wood End infant and preschool in Milton Keynes, said: “After more than a decade of cuts, further savings are getting impossible to find. I had already cut spending to the bare bones.”

In the absence of a caretaker, the school business manager has been putting out the bins. “Our entire capital budget is just £4,500 which has to cover all building repairs, ICT and health and safety, it’s laughable,” Wilson said. “We’ve had to have relatives of staff come in to do odd jobs for us, like repairing a collapsed shed in the play area.”

The general secretary of the National Education Union, Daniel Kebede, said: “Funding for English schools has hit rock bottom. The result is overstretched school staff, crumbling buildings and harm to our children’s education, with some of the largest class sizes in Europe. We are urging the government to decisively deal with the school funding crisis once and for all and properly fund our children’s schooling.”

The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman, said members were being asked to do more with less, including growing demand for special educational needs support. “School leaders share the government’s ambition for inclusion, but are warning that system reform must be accompanied with sufficient funding,” he said.

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.