Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – They’re not done yet, but the start of the new school year in District 186 will be new policies addressing the use of artificial intelligence by school students.

Springfield Director of School Leadership Erica Filipiak says the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) will have its own mandates ready by July first, but the district started looking at its own policy last year.

“The basis around our AI work was a framework that we call HAIH — Human-AI-Human,” said Filipiak, to the District 186 Board this week.  “We know that we are really just wanting use AI as a tool to elevate our learning, not replace our learning.”

Filipiak says in other words, the hope would be to teach students how to use it responsibly, while also being able to identify work that may be done artificially.

“Once they get the output from AI, (we then want to make sure students are) being able to check that, making sure it’s real, genuine, correct information, then deciding what they can do with that information to kind of better their learning, or taking it to the next step in creating something,” said Filipiak.

Filipiak says all the while, students will need to understand that the final arbiter of what can and can’t be used is the classroom teacher.

ISBE is expected to have their mandates ready by July first.