Petition for Baulkham Hills High School English Faculty to Cease the Use of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Prompts/Stimuli in Examinations

We, the students of Baulkham Hills H.S., are troubled by the blatant use of a generative image/A.I. software in place of a valid stimulus in a recent (2024) English exam paper. It conflicts with the premise of English as a subject (a main branch of the arts, which should constitute creativity), and is an anti-human move towards technology dependence which we believe this faculty ought to take a stand against.

Not only is the image a poor replacement for what could be a thought-provoking visual stimulus, but it is a large step in the wrong direction for the education system as a whole. At a school which fosters growth and creativity, it is truly unsettling to see the teachers turn to a soulless and amoral tool to produce a picture. It is not a difficult task to seek out meaningful photographic media or artwork created by a living, feeling human being, especially for a faculty whose experiences and knowledge centre around belonging and creativity. It’s no secret that the majority of our school has a connection to multiple cultures (thus the topic of belonging is highly relevant to us as a community), so it is frankly disrespectful to undervalue the topic to the degree that a genuine visual stimulus cannot be found and used in a test. Even in the case that the image was already created and it was simply sourced from the internet, it is a true display of disregard for human intellect in a world steering towards the compulsive use of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the image is extremely easy to identify as A.I., there is no way that it could have been mistaken to be a digital artwork - leading us to the conclusion that the inclusion of the A.I.-generated image was intentional. To be clear, our worries stem from the use of generative A.I., and with no disrespect to the faculty. This petition intends to draw attention to greater consequences and implications of the image in question being used in an English assessment task.

There are more than just moral implications to using A.I. for image generation and any other purpose. Each prompt that goes into an A.I. software like ChatGPT requires ten times the electricity and water to run than a Google Search does (sans Google A.I. summaries). This is due to the fact that the servers that are used to process a user’s request/input require cooling. A normal search engine uses 0.5 mL, while a ChatGPT search uses 50mL per search. Keep in mind that multiple regions including South America and Central Africa are currently in drought or experiencing water scarcity. It is unfair that people in Western countries can enjoy the luxury of this technology while others struggle to source water and space. If water waste isn’t enough of a tax on the environment, these servers’ carbon footprint and electricity usage is skyrocketing and set to place A.I. data centers in between Japan and Russia at sixth place (at 1050 terawatts) in the global electricity usage rankings by 2026 (MIT News: Generative AI’s Environmental Impact, 2025). Perhaps one image isn’t going to send us into apocalyptic levels of environmental depletion, but it sets a precedent that Baulkham Hills H.S. and its staff not only condone, but actively engage in the use of A.I. despite the clear and scientifically backed consequences that have begun to arise in the physical world.

As students (and young people with amplified effects on this world), we do not want to inherit an earth marred by the effects of A.I., when real artists already produce extremely impactful and certainly (to your benefit) technique-rich artworks to analyse in our examinations. Some such artists include Tina Tona and Lucy Liu, two female artists of colour who champion identity and belonging in their work, and are exemplary displays of the creativity that comes with the human experience. Artists such as these women are now at risk of having their work stolen and combined with countless others’ to produce A.I. “artwork”, which is nothing more than a disgraceful amalgamation of many real artists’ labour. Having their emotions and lives taken out of context and blended up by a computer chip in the name of convenient and low-effort “art” - and that term is used very loosely here - should be taken as nothing less than a threat to your very livelihoods and hopefully, a subject which you love as much as we do. Out of our passion for the arts, we come to you with concern and even criticism, because we believe that no student, at our school or otherwise, should be expected to analyse an image which, disrespectfully to the A.I. (which cannot feel at all), is a poor excuse for real art.

At our school, the majority of students are involved in some form of the creative or performance arts, such as Visual Arts, Ensemble, and Industrial Technology programs which run inside and out of school. In fact, students of these subjects are at risk of losing the liberty to engage with the art forms we love due to the rise in artificial intelligence models which are able to steal from and copy artists. This eliminates the career opportunities available to us due to the fear that we will, not to repeat the fear mongering sentiment growing in society, be replaced by A.I.. With this in mind, it should be understandable that many of us are moved to fight against the invasion of such technologies into places like schools which should neither encourage nor model the use of A.I. software, especially in an arts subject. It has already begun to take away the joy of creating - replacing it with the constant fear of accusations and witch hunts that now occur whenever we turn in assessments.

The purpose of including a visual stimulus (specifically that in the Year 9 Term 2 2024 paper) was to teach students how to analyse the artistic techniques used to portray belonging, a distinctly human concept which an A.I. can only attempt to emulate (unsuccessfully). Honestly, asking students to respond to this stimulus defeats the purpose of the task, eliminating any useful takeaways due to the image being a mimicry of genuine art, and erasing any meaning from the art which it steals from. It is our opinion that students stand to gain a lot from studying and responding to real art as it doesn’t pull from the life of the A.I. (since it doesn’t have a life). In addition, the stimulus used included genuine gibberish such as “Howr to belingimg”, which is unacceptable in an English task of the high calibre associated with the BHHS English faculty. Coming from a group of students who have dedicated most of our lives to learning and creating, and have put hard work into studying here at Baulko, we deserve to be assessed on stimuli created by actual people.

TL;DR (for signatories)

We stand against A.I. being used in schooling by the very teachers who should be condemning it, especially in creative fields such as English. Our peers who underwent an assessment containing an A.I.-generated stimulus have been asked to analyse and detect techniques and emotions, which were neither present nor thought out, due to the nature of generative image technology. The ethics of using it should also come into question, since the very students being exposed to it are the same ones who will inherit the planet and all of the negative impacts that such unsustainable tools cause. If not for the good of the planet, increased use of A.I. will only encourage lazy and disingenuous work from both students and staff. Especially in such creative fields of work, artificial creativity (an oxymoron in itself) is a genuine threat to the future of creatives as well as the education of students like us and should be avoided and condemned by our mentors (that means you, teachers).

We hope that students and staff alike will stand with us and support this petition. Thank you in advance.