Chatbots ‘making things up’, education department warns parents
Artificial intelligence will be used to plan lessons and set homework tasks in more Australian schools, despite concerns it is failing complex maths questions and ‘making things up’.
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Artificial intelligence will be used to plan lessons and set homework tasks in more Australian schools, despite concerns it is failing complex maths questions and “making things up’’.
Western Australia will follow NSW and South Australia in trialling the use of a generative AI “chatbot’’ to save teachers time planning lessons, assignments and homework.
But a trial of a Microsoft chatbot in NSW public schools – known as NSWEduChat – this year has revealed the technology can “struggle with subjects that require specific answers’’.
The NSW Education Department has advised teachers to double-check the chatbot’s answers to questions – especially in maths.
“The app responds best to questions that could be answered in many ways rather than one specific answer,’’ it states in a summary of early trials.
“Therefore, it will struggle with subjects that require specific answers. Users should review every output produced using generative AI to ensure accuracy.’’
The department has identified subjects where “extra caution should be taken’’ using the chatbot. “Currently, those subjects are Maths Extensions 1 and 2,’’ it says.
SA – the first state to trail AI in schools last year – has warned parents about privacy and exposure to “inappropriate content’’ from commercially available AI such as ChatGPT and Quill.
“Every school determines how their teachers and students can use AI,’’ it states. “Chatbots sometimes provide answers that can’t be tracked back to the source information.
“They can produce false references to support answers. They can also make things up, which is known as an AI ‘hallucination’.
“AI responses shouldn’t be taken as a source of truth.’’
SA Education warns parents not to let children enter personal information into AI chatbots, or to use any images or videos of students, staff or family members.
“Chatbots may produce inappropriate content for students based on the questions asked, because they’re trained using large data sets and they’re not fully moderated,’’ it states in advice to parents. “AI responses may hold biases against individuals or groups in the data.
“Image and video generators could be used to create offensive or inappropriate content, which may not be intentional.
“They could also be used to produce copyrighted materials.
“You shouldn’t use images or videos of students, staff, schools, family members or members of the community.’’
SA still allows teachers to experiment with different forms of AI, even though it trialled a custom-built Microsoft bot aligned with the state curriculum.
The federal and WA governments will spend $4.7m building a customised bot that gathers its information from the curriculum, for trial in eight schools, including the WA School of Isolated and Distance Education.
WA Education Minister Tony Buti said AI would save teachers time in preparing lessons. “We want our teachers to be teaching our kids,’’ he said on Monday.
“To do this, unnecessary administrative burdens must be reduced, and we hope this new pilot program can support our teachers and ease their workload.’’
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the federal government was giving schools across Australia $30m in a “workload reduction fund’’ for teachers.
“AI will never replace a great teacher, but it can help cut down the time they spend doing admin so they can spend more time in the classroom,’’ he said.
NSW Education Minister Prue Car called on the federal government to also support her state’s trial of AI in classrooms.
The NSW chatbot only responds to questions that relate to education-related content.
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