A 17-year-old Boulder student named Om told fellow members of Colorado’s Youth Advisory Council about a friend who used ChatGPT to help write an essay, then could not explain what he had actually written. That anecdote, shared at a COYAC meeting on July 31, has become the centerpiece of a student-led push urging Colorado lawmakers to create a statewide task force on artificial intelligence in education, one that would set ethics and policy guidelines for schools still making up their own rules on the fly.
Om and his colleagues have proposed an artificial intelligence in education task force housed within the Colorado Department of Education, according to the Denver Gazette. The group would bring together educators, administrators, educational technology organizations and students to figure out how school districts can capture AI’s benefits while guarding against what researchers call cognitive offloading — using technology to reduce mental effort. Om told the Gazette that the lack of statewide guidance is the starting point of the problem, and he has asked lawmakers to consider sponsoring a bill based on the task force proposal in the upcoming session.
Right now, Colorado school districts set their own AI rules with no statewide guidance for implementing the technology responsibly, per the Gazette’s reporting. Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, banned students’ use of ChatGPT this year, saying the district worried the chatbot’s chat feature could increase cyberbullying, academic misconduct and over-reliance on AI. The district said the ban prioritized students’ safety and privacy, even as it separately unveiled a set of other AI tools on school-issued devices.
Half of Teachers Already Use AI, Many Feel Unprepared
The patchwork approach comes as AI use has already become widespread in Colorado classrooms. About 50% of Colorado teachers report using artificial intelligence tools in their jobs, though roughly half also say they feel unprepared for AI’s future impact on education, according to the Colorado Department of Education’s Teaching and Learning Conditions survey covered by KUNC. It was the first time the biennial statewide survey asked educators directly about AI tools…