This is a petition to ban the use of AI grading and assignments. Multiple teachers -especially world language teachers- have used AI as a tool for our grading and teaching. While this may seem like a proficient and effective way to approach our education, it is quite the opposite. AI creates so much waste for the environment and hurts our critical thinking skills. Like stated in an article by MIT, “… a great deal of water is needed to cool the hardware used for training, deploying, and fine-tuning generative AI models, which can strain municipal water supplies and disrupt local ecosystems. The increasing number of generative AI applications has also spurred demand for high-performance computing hardware, adding indirect environmental impacts from its manufacture and transport.‘When we think about the environmental impact of generative AI, it is not just the electricity you consume when you plug the computer in. There are much broader consequences that go out to a system level and persist based on actions that we take,’ says Elsa A. Olivetti, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the lead of the Decarbonization Mission of MIT’s new Climate Project.” Not only does it effect the environment, but when used in education and grading, it is often more incorrect and unreliable than it is useful. It is our teacher’s responsibility to create and grade our assignments, just like it is our responsibility to complete them, not AI. The students of Benjamin Franklin demand change. We ask you for a ban of AI use in our learning. Thank you.

Sign this if you are a:

-student at Ben Franklin 

-teacher at Ben Franklin 

-parent of a Ben Franklin student 

-any staff at Ben Franklin