AI is creeping directly into the work of teachers, and it won’t surprise many people

Students are not the only ones who can use AI: their teachers are also entitled to tools intended for them. So, good idea or threat to education?

Large language models (LLM) have made a sudden and controversial appearance in schools, giving educational teams a hard time and some headaches. However, if ChatGPT quickly became persona non grata in classrooms, students are never really deprived of it, and you certainly don’t need to read a lot of homework to notice it.

AI has become a real “ word calculator » which can also be used by teachers, for better or for worse.

ChatGPT from CE2 to Terminale

The job of a teacher is not always easy, especially when it comes to correcting copies. This task, in particular, can quickly become mechanical with large amounts of data to process. But, guess who is particularly talented in this area? Artificial intelligence.

As proof, programs powered by AI and intended for teachers are starting to flourish almost everywhere. Crowdmark, Gradescope, and EssayGrader are all designed, as their names suggest, to take the work out of proofreading. One of the most complete, Writable, allows you to generate comments on the work of students from CE2 to Terminale, as well as to create exercises ranging from multiple choice questions to dissertation topics, all accompanied by the corresponding answers.

An encouraging horizon or one bordering on dystopia?

If this type of tool is enough to make one cringe, the editor of Writable wants to be reassuring: the results of the program are systematically verified by the teacher, thus guaranteeing the presence of a human being in the process. Ultimately, the time saved can leave more room for interaction with students and more fun activities. Many will say that overcrowded classes complicate the profession, and a little help would surely be welcome.

However, this technology could have detrimental effects on educational work. LLMs have their flaws, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Writable found errors where none existed, or provided incorrect information in assignments. Gemini users can attest to this: AIs sometimes interpret things in unexpected ways, and the added value for teachers and students could quickly become questionable.

Of course, ChatGPT and its peers can be trained on very specific corpora and configured according to needs. But other fears concern the relationship to the professorship itself: is an evaluation by AI as relevant and rewarding as the feedback of a human being? Furthermore, aren’t teachers at risk of knowing their subject less well, at the risk of becoming facilitators who know how to use ChatGPT rather than education professionals who transmit knowledge?

The Clubic editorial staff will be careful not to answer this question, given the complexity and sensitivity of the subject. In any case, for the moment it seems difficult to ban artificial intelligence from our schools. Used well, it could perhaps become a relevant tool for students and their teachers, like any other technology. It will still be necessary to properly train teaching staff, and above all to obtain real guarantees regarding the use of personal data or the real added value of LLMs which, let us not forget, have significant financial and environmental costs.

Source : Ars Technica