I'm a teacher who has integrated AI and ChatGPT into my classroom. It saves me time and helps me be a more efficient educator.
I'm a journalist and journalism educator. I teach kids about sourcing and how to avoid plagiarizing material. In my media ethics class, I ask them to sign a contract saying they won't use other people's material.
So what the heck was I doing playing with AI? And what if I actually liked it?
Spoiler alert: I did, and it's kind of awesome.
ChatGPT has become helpful for me
Teachers have focused so much on how our students might use AI to cheat that we may have forgotten how it can help us in the classroom and at home.
I'm using AI (specifically ChatGPT) in practical, everyday ways.
I recently completed a 16-week intensive ELA and math tutoring program in our local school district. The material I was given for the program didn't work well for my kids, so I ran it through ChatGPT to make it more digestible.
With AI, I can customize my lessons — quickly. Tens and ones review? No problem. Bar graph with ice cream flavors? Done. First grade fractions? Been there, done that, too. I've even started playing around with Bingo designs for fun.
I'm also using AI to play teacher at home. When my 6th grader needs to review states of matter or the history of ancient China, we turn to AI together. ChatGPT whips up multiple-choice quizzes (with answer keys) faster than I can make dinner. The same thing goes for studying India's monsoon season. Once, I even asked AI to create a quiz on how to spot fake news.
I recently looked back on my ChatGPT history and realized how much I had used AI to generate study guides, like the one I made for "The Outsiders," by S.E. Hinton. My son got an A on that quiz.
I don't think AI will ever replace me
As much as I've come to rely on AI, I've learned that it isn't going to solve all my classroom conundrums.
For example, it won't comfort a crying student because he or she did poorly on a test and fears her parents will ground her. AI isn't going to help me decide when a student is sick enough to visit the school nurse. It's not going to help me figure out why a student understands one concept of math but can't grasp another.
But given all the complexities and challenges of being an educator right now, I'll take the help, even if it means double-checking all of the facts.
I'm leaning into AI, but cautiously
I still feel a little guilty when I ask AI to check a sentence's grammar or to eliminate redundancies in my writing. I'm not sure if it's because I asked for help or because the work is often great.
Still, ChatGPT has made me more efficient as a teacher. I can easily whip up study guides that benefit my students and tailor lesson plans to them. All of this frees up time for me to connect with my students more easily and focus on other tasks.
I'm glad I took a leap of faith, and I plan on exploring AI as it continues to grow.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNET
14 minutes ago
- CNET
Your OnePlus 13 Will Get a Dedicated AI 'Mind Space' in Update Rolling Out Now
It's a non-negotiable right now that every phone-maker out there must have a plan for integrating AI into its devices. OnePlus is a little late to the party, but it's arrived nonetheless. Back in May, the company announced plans for bringing its own vision of personalized AI to OnePlus phones, and from this week, it's rolling out to the OnePlus 13 and 13R. At a launch event in London earlier this year I not only got to see the first AI features to land on OnePlus phones in action, but also learn about what the company's future plans are for bringing more complex and sophisticated AI features to its phones down the road. With all Android phone-makers increasingly making use of best-in-class Qualcomm chips and relying on Google's Gemini AI, having a strong AI strategy is one way they can set themselves apart from rivals. I was impressed with how far OnePlus seems to be thinking ahead and not rushing into going ham on AI. Its initial AI rollout will likely capture people's attention, even if its ideas aren't entirely original. The OnePlus 13's upcoming "Mind Space." Katie Collins/CNET OnePlus' statement AI tool is called Plus Mind, which can save, suggest, store and search based on what's currently on your phone screen, ultimately depositing the details in an app OnePlus is calling "Mind Space." Plus Mind can be activated at any time, either by a dedicated button (if your phone has one) or by a swipe-up gesture. If it spots details of an event or reservation, it will propose creating a calendar entry. Mind Space is a place to "organize your fragmented memories," said Arthur Lam, the company's director of OxygenOS and AI strategy. This is a hub where all of your most important content will live. AI search will allow you to find what you need without the information overload you may be used to, or it will automatically translate content into another language to make it accessible and searchable. Plus Mind will debut with the upcoming launch of the OnePlus 13S, a phone designed specifically for the Asian market, which comes with a dedicated AI button (the "Plus Key," as OnePlus is calling it) on the side of the phone. That means for those of us in the US and Europe, we'll have to wait a little longer to enjoy OnePlus' vision for AI ourselves. It will eventually be rolling out to the OnePlus 13 as an over-the-air update later this year, although the company is yet to confirm exactly when. The Plus Key on the OnePlus 13S. Katie Collins/CNET Plus Mind and Mind Space: My first impressions On the OnePlus 13, which shipped before the addition of the Plus Key, you instead have to use a three-fingered swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen to activate the AI features. When I tested this in person, it was hit or miss as to whether I could get it to work. There's definitely a knack to it -- you need to start from a couple of centimeters above the lower rim -- and there's a high chance of accidentally displacing what's on the screen. It's clear that OnePlus designed Plus Mind to be used with a dedicated button, and no doubt all future OnePlus phones will feature a Plus Key of their own. It is a shame in retrospect, though, that the key is missing from its most widely available 2025 flagship phone. After using Plus Mind to save a variety of content, I had mixed opinions on how useful it was. The process of capturing and creating events out of details displayed on screen was seamless, and I found that I was able to use natural language within Mind Space to pull up the details of these events after the fact. But when saving articles I thought were interesting, Mind Space wasn't able to provide a summary of the entirety of what I'd been reading -- only of the specific text that was on screen at the time I activated Plus Mind. OnePlus' natural language search within Mind Space worked well for me. Katie Collins/CNET I also struggled to organise the content into collections within Mind Space. This is a manual process, rather than a situation in which the AI takes over to categorize everything you've saved. This feels a little like a missed opportunity. Like other Android phone makers, OnePlus has the benefit of tapping into the best of Google's Gemini phone tools, while also choosing what additional features it wants to bring to its phones to make them stand apart from its competitors. That said, its initial foray into AI with Mind Space is bound to draw comparisons to what Nothing is doing with Essential Space -- its own dedicated hub for saving content, snippets, links and reminders. What's next for OnePlus AI? Plus Mind and Mind Space are just the first part of OnePlus' three-stage AI strategy. Next up is integrating a large language model into Plus Mind, allowing your phone to understand your habits to create a "persona" it uses to understand you. "It will help you understand yourself," said Lam, and could even help you discover something "surprising" or "enlightening" about yourself. Stage 3 is when OnePlus plans to go full AI agent, turning into a personal assistant that can know everything about you. But the company's not quite there just yet. In the meantime it has a few other ideas in the pipeline. Coming first to India (again, not the EU or the US), are AI VoiceScribe, which will provide you with a quick summary after your call on WhatsApp, Snapchat or Telegram, and AI Call Assistant, which provides you with in-call translation in both text and voice. On the more playful side, OnePlus is introducing two AI photo tools. The first, AI Best Face 2.0, will allow you to correct the faces of up 20 people in a group photo so that everyone is looking their best (if they have their eyes closed, for example, or what OnePlus describes as a "suboptimal expression"). AI Reframe, meanwhile, will analyze your carelessly shot holiday snaps and suggest creative cropping and framing to make it look like you weren't three cocktails deep when you shot them. These photo features will be come to OnePlus phones this summer, but for the major OnePlus AI tool rollout, you might have to wait a little longer.
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The government wants AI to fight wars and review your taxes
Elon Musk has receded from Washington but one of his most disruptive ideas about government is surging inside the Trump administration. Artificial intelligence, Musk has said, can do a better job than federal employees at many tasks - a notion being tested by AI projects trying to automate work across nearly every agency in the executive branch. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The Federal Aviation Administration is exploring whether AI can be a better air traffic controller. The Pentagon is using AI to help officers distinguish between combatants and civilians in the field, and said Monday that its personnel would begin using the chatbot Grok offered by Musk's start-up, xAI, which is trying to gain a foothold in federal agencies. Artificial intelligence technology could soon play a central role in tax audits, airport security screenings and more, according to public documents and interviews with current and former federal workers. Many of these AI programs aim to shrink the federal workforce - continuing the work of Musk's U.S. DOGE Service that has cut thousands of government employees. Government AI is also promised to reduce wait times and lower costs to American taxpayers. Government tech watchdogs worry the Trump administration's automation drive - combined with federal layoffs - will give unproven technology an outsize role. If AI drives federal decision-making instead of aiding human experts, glitches could unfairly deprive people of benefits or harm public safety, said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. There is 'a fundamental mismatch' between what AI can do and what citizens expect from government, she said. President Joe Biden in 2023 signed an executive order aimed at spurring government use of AI, while also containing its risks. In January, President Donald Trump repealed that order. His administration has removed AI guardrails while seeking to accelerate its rollout. A comprehensive White House AI plan is expected this month. 'President Trump has long stressed the importance of American AI dominance, and his administration is using every possible tool to streamline our government and deliver more efficient results for the American people,' White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. The Washington Post reviewed government disclosures and interviewed current and former federal workers about plans to expand government AI. Some expressed alarm at the administration's disregard for safety and government staff. Others saw potential to improve efficiency. 'In government, you have so much that needs doing and AI can help get it done and get it done faster,' said Jennifer Pahlka, who was deputy U.S. chief technology officer in President Barack Obama's second term. Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE staffer who pushed the Department of Veterans Affairs to use AI to identify potentially wasteful spending, said government should aggressively deploy the technology becoming so prevalent elsewhere. Government processes are efficient today, he said, 'but could be made more efficient with AI.' Lavingia argued no task should be off limits for experimentation, 'especially in war.' 'I don't trust humans with life and death tasks,' he said, echoing a maximalist view of AI's potential shared by some DOGE staffers. Here's how AI is being deployed within some government agencies embracing the technology. - - - Waging war The Pentagon is charging ahead with artificial intelligence this year. The number of military and civilian personnel using NGA Maven, one of the Pentagon's core AI programs, has more than doubled since January, said Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, in a May speech. The system, launched in 2017, processes imagery from satellites, drones and other sources to detect and identify potential targets for humans to assess. More than 25,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel around the world now use NGA Maven. NGA Maven is being expanded, Adm. Whitworth said, to interpret data such as audio and text in conjunction with imagery, offering commanders a 'live map' of military operations. The aim is to help it better distinguish combatants from noncombatants and enemies from allies, and for units using NGA Maven to be able to make 1,000 accurate decisions about potential targets within an hour. The Pentagon's AI drive under Trump will give tech companies like data-mining firm Palantir a larger role in American military power. A White House executive order and a Defense Department memo have instructed federal officials to rely more on commercial technology. In May, the Defense Department announced it was more than doubling its planned spending on a core AI system that is part of NGA Maven called Maven Smart System, allocating an additional $795 million. The software, provided by Palantir, analyzes sensor data to help soldiers identify targets and commanders to approve strikes. It has been used for planning logistics to support deployed troops. - - - Air traffic control The Federal Aviation Administration is testing whether AI software can reliably aid human air traffic controllers, according to a person with knowledge of the agency's plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. Humans would remain in the loop, the person said, but AI would help reduce fatigue and distraction. Air traffic control staff would continue to communicate with pilots, for example, but AI might handle repetitive and data-driven tasks, monitoring airspace more generally. Due in part to ongoing staff shortages in air traffic control, the agency's AI plans include 'planning for less people,' the person said. Other uses for AI being explored at the FAA include analyzing air traffic or crash data and predicting when aircraft are likely to need maintenance, the person said. The FAA sees artificial intelligence as a potential tool to address airline safety concerns that were brought to the fore by the January midair collision that killed more than 60 people near Reagan National Airport. 'The FAA is exploring how AI can improve safety,' the agency said in a unsigned statement, but air traffic controllers do not currently use the technology. That includes using the technology to scan incident reports and other data to find risks around airports with a mixture of helicopter and airplane traffic, the statement said, while emphasizing humans will remain in charge. 'FAA subject matter experts are essential to our oversight and safety mission and that will never change,' the statement said. - - - Examining patents The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office wants to test whether part of the job of patent examiners - who review patent applications to determine their validity - can replaced by AI, according to records obtained by The Post and an agency employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Patent seekers who opt into a pilot program will have their applications fed into an AI search tool that will trawl the agency's databases for existing patents with similar information. It will email applicants a list of the ten most relevant documents, with the goal of efficiently spurring people to revise, alter or withdraw their application, the records show. From July 21, per an email obtained by The Post, it will become 'mandatory' for examiners to use an AI-based search tool to run a similarity check on patent applications. The agency did not respond to a question asking if it is the same technology used in the pilot program that will email patent applicants. The agency employee said AI could have an expansive role at USPTO. Examiners write reports explaining whether applications fall afoul of patent laws or rules. The large language models behind recent AI systems like ChatGPT 'are very good at writing reports, and their ability to analyze keeps getting better,' the employee said. This month, the agency had planned to roll out another new AI search tool that examiners will be expected to use, according to internal documents reviewed by The Post. But the launch moved so quickly that concerns arose USPTO workers - and some top leaders - did not understand what was about to happen. Some staff suggested delaying the launch, the documents show, and it is unclear when it will ultimately be released. USPTO referred questions to the Commerce Department, which shared a statement from an unnamed spokesperson. 'At the USPTO, we are evaluating how AI and technology can better support the great work of our patent examiners,' the statement said. - - - Airport security screening You may see fewer security staff next time you fly as the Transportation Security Administration automates a growing number of tasks at airport checkpoints. TSA began rolling out facial recognition cameras to check IDs in 2022, a program now live in more than 200 airports nationwide. Despite studies showing that facial recognition is not perfect and less accurate at identifying people of color, the agency says it is more effective at spotting impostors than human reviewers. A federal report this year found TSA's facial recognition is more than 99 percent accurate across all demographic groups tested. The agency says it is experimenting with automated kiosks that allow pre-checked passengers to pass through security with 'minimal to no assistance' from TSA officers. During the Biden administration, these and other AI efforts at TSA were aimed at helping security officers be more efficient - not replacing them, said a former technology official at the Department of Homeland Security, TSA's parent agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. 'It frees up the officer to spend more time interacting with a passenger,' the former official said. The new Trump administration has indicated it wants to accelerate AI projects, which could reduce the number of TSA officers at airports, according to Galvin Widjaja, CEO of Austin-based a contractor which works with TSA and DHS on tools for screening airport travelers. 'If an AI can make the decision, and there's an opportunity to reduce the manpower, they're going to do that,' Widjaja said in an interview. Russ Read, a spokesman for TSA, said in an emailed statement that 'the future of aviation security will be a combination of human talent and technological innovation.' - - - Tax audits The Internal Revenue Service has an AI program to help employees query its internal manual, in addition to chatbots for a variety of internal uses. But the agency is now looking to off-load more significant tasks to AI tools. Once the new administration took over, with a mandate from DOGE that targeted the IRS, the agency examined the feasibility of deploying AI to manage tax audits, according to a person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The push to automate work so central to the IRS's mission underscores a broader strategy: to delegate functions typically left to human experts to powerful software instead. 'The end game is to have one IT, HR, etc., for Treasury and get AI to do everything,' the person said. A DOGE official, start-up founder Sam Corcos, has been overseeing work to deploy AI more broadly at the IRS. But the lack of oversight of an ambitious effort to centralize the work of the IRS and feed it to a powerful AI tool has raised internal worries, the person said. 'The IRS has used AI for business functions including operational efficiency, fraud detection, and taxpayer services for a long time,' a Treasury Department spokeswoman said in a statement. 'Treasury CIO Sam Corcos is implementing the fulsome IRS modernization plan that taxpayers have deserved for over three decades.' - - - Caring for veterans In April, the Department of Veterans Affairs's top technology official emailed lieutenants with his interpretation of the Trump administration's new AI policy. 'The message is clear to me,' Charles Worthington, who serves as VA's chief technology officer and chief AI officer, said. 'Be aggressive in seizing AI opportunity, while implementing common sense safeguards to ensure these tools are trustworthy when they are used in VA's most sensitive areas such as benefit determinations and health care.' The email was published to VA's website in response to a public records request. VA said it deployed hundreds of uses of artificial intelligence last year, making it one of the agencies most actively tapping AI based on government disclosures. Among the most controversial of these programs has been REACH VET, a scoring algorithm used to prioritize mental health assistance to patients predicted to be at the highest risk of suicide. Last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project, a nonprofit news organization, found that the system prioritized help to White men, especially those who have been divorced or widowed - groups studies show to be at the highest risk of suicide. VA acknowledged that REACH VET previously did not consider known risk factors for suicide in women veterans, making it less likely that women struggling with thoughts of suicide would flagged for assistance. Pete Kasperowicz, a VA spokesman, said in an email that the agency recently updated the REACH VET algorithm to account for several new risk factors specific to women, including military sexual trauma, pregnancy, ovarian cysts and infertility. Since the program launched in 2017, it has helped identify more than 117,000 at-risk veterans, prompting staff to offer them additional support and services, he said. REACH VET was one of over 300 AI applications that the Biden administration labeled 'safety impacting' or 'rights impacting' in annual transparency reports. The Trump administration, which has derided the 'risk-averse approach of the previous administration,' discontinued those labels and will instead denote sensitive programs as 'high-impact.' GRAPHIC Related Content He may have stopped Trump's would-be assassin. Now he's telling his story. He seeded clouds over Texas. Then came the conspiracy theories. How conservatives beat back a Republican sell-off of public lands
Harvard Business Review
30 minutes ago
- Harvard Business Review
Cultivating a Culture of Human Ingenuity in the Age of AI
For decades, the biopharmaceutical industry has been rightly focused on changing the practice of medicine. But in the new age of biomedical research fueled by artificial intelligence (AI), the focus must also be on reinventing how we work. At Sanofi, we have undergone a journey of modernization that positions us to deliver robust innovation over the next decade—advancing health for millions of people around the world. Our success depends as much on what we do as how we do it. When our core capabilities match the speed and sophistication of our science and technology, we accelerate the pace of innovation, decision making, and access to medicines and vaccines. Our unwavering purpose—chasing the miracles of science to improve people's lives—fuels our high-performance culture and drives us toward excellence. Fiercely Prioritizing Time Patients are waiting for life-changing—and in some instances life-saving—medicines. This reality demands that we create a culture that rewards the fierce prioritization of our efforts. We have given our employees the power to make deliberate and sometimes difficult choices about what truly matters. In direct alignment with our purpose, we assess every project against its potential to improve patient outcomes. But a culture isn't created overnight; it takes practice and intention. First, we tackled complexity head-on. For the past three years, our companywide simplification initiative has dramatically reduced administrative processes, accelerated scientific workflows, improved data management, and streamlined cross-sector strategic planning. This transformation allowed us to identify and address operational challenges through strategic investments and targeted solutions—and it was guided by our employees. Second, we built a culture that values impact over broad activity. As AI increasingly handles routine tasks that once consumed our time, we've shifted our focus to uniquely human strengths: patient-centered action, bold thinking, and collaborative leadership. This represents a fundamental shift to recognize thoughtful work as inherently productive. Innovating Beyond the Science Innovation at Sanofi extends far beyond our laboratories and research facilities—it requires every employee to rethink how we work, collaborate, and serve patients worldwide. Today we are innovating beyond the science by embracing AI and upskilling our employees to leverage the technology to its fullest potential. In 2023, we launched Plai, an industry-leading AI-powered platform developed in partnership with Aily Labs, which solved the critical challenge of breaking down internal silos and democratizing access to information. In line with our responsible AI guiding principles, Plai delivers real-time, reactive data interactions and gives an unprecedented 360-degree view across all Sanofi activities, empowering more than 30,000 employees to make faster, intelligence-driven decisions. To embed this capability deeply within our organization, we brought employees along the journey with a 10-week immersive training program providing in-depth knowledge of the power of large language models and inspiring new applications across our business. We aimed to create an environment that allows our teams to reimagine how AI could inform their everyday decisions, improve their productivity, and accelerate our development timelines. We wanted them to think about how we can change the pace of our business. The democratization of information has been a true game changer for us at Sanofi—not only in how we work together but also in our collective mindset. Our experience with rolling out Plai has provided us with a vision of how innovating beyond science is helping us shape our future. We must continue to reimagine every aspect of our business to serve patients worldwide. Transforming Talent Through strategic initiatives that promote both calculated risk-taking and professional growth, we're reshaping how our teams collaborate, make decisions, and ultimately serve patients. Our approach combines the agility of a startup with the resources of a global health care leader, creating an environment where bold ideas flourish and talent flows to where it can make the greatest impact. Our Thoughtful Risk-Taking (TRT) framework equips our teams with the resources they need to make informed decisions with confidence, empowering employees at all levels to weigh options carefully, then act decisively in the best interests of patients. This approach promotes psychological safety, while encouraging bold action. Teams worldwide have embraced TRT as they work to bring life-changing medicines to patients who simply cannot wait for the often drawn-out decision-making process that exists in large companies. We've already seen remarkable initiatives emerge, including innovative compassionate-use programs that provide patients with early access to select medicines, addressing unmet medical needs faster than traditional approaches would allow. We have also enabled dynamic resourcing to staff important projects with the highest need through our Gig program. This initiative allows employees to volunteer for short-term assignments that tap into specialized skills from other business areas. All employees can proactively apply their talents where their skill sets can create the most value for patient outcomes and adopt new skills along the way. Our leadership team has actively supported 700 gigs in support of employee development and operational excellence. What Got Us Here Won't Get Us There At Sanofi, we recognize the significance of this moment. Each of us carries the power to reimagine what's possible in our R&D-driven, AI-powered, and patient-integrated world. When we embrace our collective purpose, we create a high-performance culture focused on improving people's lives. By boldly questioning our past, honestly assessing our present, and fearlessly reaching toward tomorrow, we aren't just preparing for the future—we're also shaping it.
