BUFFALO — Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become a modern-day boogeyman for schools and parents. But Johnson County School District 1 Superintendent Charles Auzqui said that isn’t the right way to think about it.

“They are not going to shut AI off,” Auzqui said. “We need to embrace it in a way that we have control over it.”

That’s why the district formed a committee of educators and administrators to learn about AI and strategize how it will affect and become a part of education in the future. Buffalo High School Principal Gib Ostheimer is part of that committee. He said committee members are working through the summer to understand how AI will impact students.

“There are some great uses for AI,” he said. “We have to help students have not just appropriate use but beneficial use.”

That can mean using AI as a learning tool and as a support for what students and teachers already do in the classroom. AI uses computer programming to solve problems and complete tasks.

Auzqui said the way he hopes students will use it is, for example, to learn how to solve a math problem, not just get the answer.

New West Principal Mike Hanson, also a member of the committee, said AI can also be used to quiz students, create writing templates or even tutor them.

However, concerns about how AI could be used to plagiarize is still a major area of discussion, Hanson said. The definition of plagiarism has not changed.

“If the idea is not your own, that’s plagiarism,” he said. “(AI) does make it a little bit harder to detect.”

Sheridan College uses Turnitin software with built-in AI detection, Hanson said.

Turnitin is a software program that can be used to detect plagiarism in students’ assignments by comparing their work across sources throughout the internet. Johnson County schools use Turnitin, but Hanson said they don’t use the version of the program that has AI detection. He said that will be part of the conversation.

Ostheimer said the committee would most likely not take concrete action over the summer districtwide on how to work with AI. Schools, Ostheimer said, will more likely have to “adjust on the fly.”

Where changes might need to be made before the fall is within each school’s student handbook and its plagiarism policies, Hanson said.

The committee’s goal is mainly to start the conversation about AI and educate members of the district. That education will also hopefully spread to parents.

“Parents need to know, too, how much a disservice it can do for kids,” Hanson said.

AI is not infallible. Hanson said he demonstrated this to a class at New West last April when he first started seeing AI-generated content appear at the school.

“I typed in ‘tell me something about New West,” and it said we had 250 students,” Hanson said.

New West doesn’t serve more than 40 kids at a time.

“We need to make sure that we are still able to do what our highest priority is, which is educate kids,” Hanson said. “There are positive things about it, but in order to use AI for good, you have to understand how it can be misused.”

Hanson said the committee plans to have a representative present what information they have learned at the July 10 school board meeting.