Wake County school board members said Tuesday they're wary of using artificial intelligence to assess student data, as they continue to mull guardrails for using AI.
During a board work session, district officials and representatives from Amazon discussed with the board using artificial intelligence to better analyze the school system's troves of education data.
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But board members were skeptical of using AI to make decisions or recommend decisions, while more open to the idea of using AI to provide generic information about special education and individualized education programs (IEP), because the district's telephone help line for that isn't always staffed.
Superintendent Robert Taylor said AI could even pull crucial data on a student to help everyone prepare for those IEP meetings.
"It would still be the responsibility of the team to analyze the data and make decisions, but this would help collect the data," Taylor said.
Board members were more hesitant about relying on what AI provides in highly regulated circumstances, such as federally regulated special education.
"I would see a lot of potential hazard in that, if it advised a parent incorrectly," such as getting a date wrong or misinterpreting a law, Board Chairman Chris Heagarty said. "I wouldn't trust that to a machine."
Board Vice Chairman Tyler Swanson said special education may not be the ideal use case for AI, citing the potential for lawsuits over compliance with federal special education law.
Tuesday's presentation was part of the second of three presentations on how the school system can use artificial intelligence to improve its operations. It's coming from Amazon Web Services, which is pitching the district on how it's transformed other schools' data storage and use.
AWS explained how the district may need to make major changes to modernize how it stores data so that it can be easily, but securely, accessed by educators looking to analyze it. That's if the district wants to regularly harness AI to solve or explore problems.
Board members weren't sure at first how to connect the presentation to their ultimate goal, which is to write and set a policy surrounding artificial intelligence's use in schools -- something they'd mostly been thinking about along the lines of which uses are appropriate and which ones are not.
Amazon representatives and district officials said board polices may need to be changed to allow for using AI for problem-solving.
The presentations are part of the school board's deliberation of an artificial intelligence policy governing how students, teachers and other employees can use AI.
The school system already encourages the use of AI but doesn't have set guidance for its use, other than a few parameters, such as using Google's Gemini instead of ChatGPT. The district has an agreement with Gemini on student data privacy. It doesn't with Chat GPT and has restricted access to ChatGPT on campuses.
A policy would set more rules around the use of AI or even set expectations for using it.
Many other school boards in North Carolina have artificial intelligence policies, typically derived from a similar template. They usually encourage the use of AI and set expectations that all students will be AI literate -- meaning, they understand what it is and how to use it properly. They also typically require AI training and AI guidelines, neither of which is defined in the policies.
Several school boards also state that copying a work of AI and representing it as one's own work would be considered plagiarism.