Artifical Intelligence is here. Deal with it.

ST. HENRY - St. Henry school officials are crafting a new policy for next school year to address Chat GPT, a new artificial intelligence tool that one high school student was caught using to write a rough draft.

Superintendent Julie Garke at this week's regular school board meeting confirmed a policy is in the works but did not specify what it may entail.

The free tool has been around just since Nov. 30 but is already raising tough questions about the future of AI in education, the tech industry and a host of professions.

It's part of a new generation of AI systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand and even produce novel images and video based on what they've learned from a vast database of digital books, online writings and other media.

Dan Garman, a high school English teacher, and Brad Luthman, a high school statistics teacher, demonstrated how Chat GPT can be used to aide education in the classroom by generating math word problems and correct grammar examples.

Luthman compared the introduction of Chat GPT to the introduction of the calculator. He said most students know how to access Chat GPT.

"I don't think I am as intimidated," Luthman said. "Obviously it can be abused for homework purposes and all that. So can calculators. So can the internet itself."

At the same time, Garman said the artificial intelligence chat bot can have some downsides. When it comes to English classes, he said it can be hard to tell if Chat GPT was involved.

Garman said he has caught one student so far who used Chat GPT to write a rough draft for a research paper. He said he could tell it was not the student's work based on the language used in the assignment.

"I guess fortunately it's a much better writer than a freshman, and I spotted it in an instant, in the first 10 words," he said.

Garman said the student admitted to using Chat GPT and was disciplined according to school plagiarism policies.

"I think what you have to do is be really involved in the writing process," Garman said. "I want to see their prewriting, I want to see their thesis statement so I know ahead of time when they're planning."

In other business, Garke said district officials have received around a dozen applications so far for the elementary school principal position after hiring current principal Adam Puthoff as superintendent. Puthoff will replace Garke when she retires at the end of this summer.

Board members also:

• approved a Title 1 fund spending plan of $22,850.24 to improve academic achievement of the disadvantaged and Title 6B spending plan of $194,609.72 through the rural education achievement program.

• approved a $4,000 anonymous donation to the girls golf team for golf bags.

• hired Brooke Uhlenhake as a kindergarten teacher on a one-year limited contract and hired Kasey Vogel as a family and consumer science teacher on a one-year limited contract. Salaries have not been finalized.

The school board meets next at 7 p.m. May 8 in the middle school/high school media center.

- The Associated Press contributed to the story.