Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming a part of everyday life, with people using it for everything from dieting tips to coding entire websites, raising the important question for Haverford: should the school block AI tools or embrace them?
This year, the school has been inconsistent with its approach to AI. The year started with ChatGPT and Claude blocked, but not with Gemini and Grok. Recently, Haverford unblocked ChatGPT on school WiFi but blocked GPT Zero, a way to check one’s AI percentage on one’s writing.
Pushing away from AI might seem like a simple way to prevent cheating, but could it actually be hurting the school more than it realizes? In the 2000s, Blockbuster, a physical DVD rental company, had the opportunity to buy Netflix, for $50 million. Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his executives thought that Netflix’s idea was insane. Ten years later, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy. While not buying Netflix could be a reason for Blockbuster’s bankruptcy, I would say their lack of ability to adapt was the main reason. Blockbuster didn’t just need to keep up with its competitors—it needed to lead the industry and be one step ahead.
In 1975, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invented the digital camera. When he told his management, they told Sasson not to tell anyone about his invention. They were comfortable with their film business and feared that digital photography could endanger it. In 1981, Sony introduced the world’s first digital camera, called Mavica. It wasn’t until 1991, sixteen years after Steven Sasson’s invention and ten years after Sony, that Kodak was forced to release its own version of the digital camera, the DCS-100. As you might assume, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
The real lesson is this: Blockbuster and Kodak didn’t need to just keep up in their industries; they needed to lead. You can’t win by responding to change; you can only win by leading it.
This is the brand-new Kūlia Academy’s way of thinking. Kūlia Academy is a new public charter school in Honolulu, Hawaii, that is designed to teach AI and data science education around a normal curriculum. This school is so popular that parents showed up for school events in such numbers that the school’s new parking lot overflowed. While this new school might seem outlandish, it proves that school and AI can blend.
Every semester that passes without a clear AI plan is a semester a rival Inter-Ac school starts building theirs. Haverford doesn’t need a perfect plan, but it needs a plan that should be modified quarterly. Waiting until the answers are given to them and passing up on an opportunity to show we are up for change is how Kodak ended up behind and how Blockbuster went bankrupt.
As a junior in high school, I don’t claim to have the perfect way to implement AI, but Haverford does. This school has the funding, resources, and personnel to create a clear AI approach for the next ten years. What’s missing is the willingness to take action. By doing nothing, we fall behind daily.