Tech critics occasionally refer to GenAI as ‘digital asbestos’ – i.e. harmful material that we will be spending years trying to purge from our digital ecosystems (what might also be termed the task of de-sloppification). 

This issue surfaced in our recent conversations with groups of teachers from our study schools. Here, one relatively new teacher describes being giving a set of lesson resources to use that had been produced a couple of years ago by a colleague. She quickly realized that a lot of the material was sub-standard, error-ridden and generally not fit for purpose.

She lamented the time it took for her to rework these resources to a useable standard … the time-sucking legacy of what was being spruiked to schools in 2024 as ‘time-saving’ technology:

“I’m being given [lesson] resources that were made a couple of years ago by previous teachers that were definitely made with GenAI when it wasn’t so good and was hallucinating and getting things wrong. They’re so full of mistakes I can’t use them. I’m having to go in and completely rework them. Its making for lots more work now just putting things right”