Nearly four years on after the introduction of ChatGPT into schools, we are beginning to see signs that GenAI is starting to lose its lustre. A recent half-day session with some our research study teachers from Brookdale High School brought up a few interesting points that we were certainly not hearing at the beginning of our study in 2024. 

One point was a general sense that a lot of teachers are not really in the mood anymore to talk about GenAI. This means that GenAI enthusiast teachers are becoming quite wary of talking about their AI use to colleagues. As these two English teachers describe:

Q. Are you happy being honest with each other, like in terms of what you do and what you don’t do with GenAI? 

Teacher A: Yeah, it depends. There’s some people who very much look down on AI. I remember telling someone in my team that I was using it and they’re like: “I wouldn’t use AI because it just makes me dumber”. And I’m thinking, there’s no point in having that conversation. Yeah, and you just kind of feel ashamed. You’re like, ‘well, I’ll just do it secretly’. 

Teacher B: We have a lot of really academic people who deeply care about like thinking on their own and, you know, value intelligence and senior English, so talking about AI will not be a conversation that they would even want to talk about

A: if you brought it up, it would be shut down.

B: Yeah, I think in Junior English it would be fine

A: I think as a large group, you know, people’d be okay with it but there’s certain people I probably wouldn’t be comfortable saying how much I use it to be honest.