Starting from early 2023, artificial intelligence (AI), has been integrating itself into people’s daily lives and has become widely accessible with multiple AI engines, most popular being ChatGPT with model 4.0. Now, recently in early August of this year, ChatGPT has released model 5.0 which has increased the quality of the content that is generated and has shortened processing time by a lot. Because of model 5.0’s new release, the question that has been on the minds of many people was, “Where is AI now in our environment?” And so we’re here to answer that question.
New Plagiarism Policy
Just this 2025-26 school year, the English department has curated a new plagiarism policy that lists the rules and consequences of AI usage in classrooms. When asked about the consequences when a student is caught, Humanities teacher Ms. Owens replied, “You have, depending on your grade level, one opportunity to correct the fraction.” She continues, saying, “Or, once you do that, you can still get full credit for the assignment depending on the grade, half credit depending on the grade, second time you do it, it’s a zero.”
How Are Teachers Tackling AI?
Aside from the English department, many teachers who teach different subjects have also faced instances of their students using AI for their assignments. Humanities Chemistry teacher Mr. James states that he’s aware when they’re using it since he thinks, “Dude, you don’t know that word” when reading over their work.
Additionally, BIT math teacher, Mr. Nunez states that he, “run[s] into [his] AI checker, and if that percentage is above 30 to 40%, something happened.” He continues on to say, “and so that’s when I kind of step in and I try to investigate a little bit more.”
How Is It Faring In The Student World?
Within Hamilton, several students go through the experience of taking an AP course. Humanities AP World teacher Ms. Pollock states how she worries about social studies. “We will no longer as a society debate the events of the past in terms of interpretations of them, what we will start to debate is if the events even happened at all because there is so much fake content,” she says.
Many students view AI as an escape, a way to contribute and put some sort of material in front of their teachers. BIT AP Environmental Science teacher Ms. Kleinmaier says she cares for her students and is aware of the struggles that come with the education system. “We really have a system that values product over journey and the learning happens when you struggle.”
Lucinda Jones, Destiny Grant, Edmundo Garcia, and Nick Ting contributed reporting to this article.
