Mr. Seán O'Sullivan:

Even if students are using AI for their homework assignments, that will be evident in their first midterm or November assessments, when there are discrepancies between their performances in their exams and the quality of their writing in their homework submissions. Again, if we train and educate our teachers in how to respond to these situations, they will be able to identify specific cases where their students are getting assistance with their homework and will be able to talk to them about it. They will be able to question if a student was not feeling as well that day as they have in the past.

To go back to the original question about teachers who in their 20s or earlier are incredibly aware of these generative AI technologies as they continued to develop, compared with somebody who has been teaching for the last 30 years, these systems are designed to be so user-friendly that if a teacher is handed access to ChatGPT and is told he or she can ask this bot anything, such teachers will see the endless opportunities it has for them in the classroom. This also applies to lesson planning and even outside of education. The key is exposure and that can be done by initiatives run by principals in their own schools.

Department-wide, showing the teachers and principals and SNAs of secondary schools what can be done right now with these language models is the best way of showing people their capabilities regardless of whether they have been teaching for the last couple of decades, or they are new to teaching and know exactly what these models can do.

Over recent years, this committee has done a huge amount of work on mental health supports in schools. Do you feel that the overuse of AI could possibly lead to greater exclusion and less collaboration among students in your own peer group? Could this cause more anxiety and additional mental health issues among students? Is there also a danger that AI could be used adversely in terms of cyberbullying? We know this is a serious issue in post-primary schools and in some primary schools as well. The Minister for Education has an idea around students in primary schools not having mobile phones and things like that. Some schools allow students to have a mobile phone on their person during the day while other schools have a different policy in that they are locked away for the day. I am interested to hear the witnesses' views on that.