California’s AI Education Policy Landscape

Student Population : 5,744,500

Official Policies

In September 2023, California Department of Education released a resource entitled “Learning With AI, Learning About AI”, in which it provides guidance into the role of AI in the classroom, safe use of the technology, and policy suggestions.

In the News

As of November 2023, California School Boards Association is assembling State Task Force on AI in Education dedicated to studying facets of AI and developing professional development sessions around each one.

Universities

UC Berkeley‘s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity has an AI Policy Hub with a mission “to cultivate an interdisciplinary research community to anticipate and address policy opportunities for safe and beneficial AI”.

As of April 2023, UC Berkeley’s School of Law released an AI policy which “allows students to use AI technology to conduct research or correct grammar. But it may not be used on exams or to compose any submitted assignments. And it can’t be employed in any way that constitutes plagiarism, which Berkeley defines as repackaging the ideas of others”.

Stanford University is home to Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), not only “producing critical scholarship on AI governance and appropriate uses, but by also serving as a convener of national and global AI discussions”. There are also a number of other resources regarding AI on Stanford’s cite, including Stanford Teaching Commons’ “Creating your course policy on AI”, which has “example syllabus statements, suggestions for what to include, and sample sentences that you might use as you think through your own course policy on AI and begin writing a statement to put in your syllabus”.

CalTech has an online resource called “Guidance on the Use of Generative AI and Large Language Model Tools”, in which it outlines four guiding principles for GenAI practice: disclosure, data and information protection, content responsibility, and Caltech’s honor code”. CalTech also has an online resource directed towards applicants, a rare resource in top tier universities.

UCLA‘s Center for the Advancement of Teaching offers the university’s most comprehensive guidance, with the following aims: “We will provide strategies for adopting AI technologies in a responsible, ethical manner, and innovating within each discipline, major, and course. Exploring and communicating about the opportunities and limitations to using these tools will allow instructors and students to critically think about how knowledge is created”. The page provides numerous resources for managing AI in various aspects of teaching.

School Districts

Los Angeles Unified School District (Population: 667,273): Included AI tools and protocols on their Responsible Use Policy (9/25/23), detailing “the use of generative artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence tools, that can generate new content including text, images, video, audio, structures, computer code, synthetic data etc. in response to prompts from users”.

Developed ‘Ed’, an AI chatbot aimed to provide “real-time updates on grades, test results and attendance—empowering them to monitor and support progress and immediately address the concerns”.