History teacher Matt Esterman opens the "Artificial Intelligence teacher toolkit" on his laptop to show off software that could turbocharge classrooms of the future.
He sees AI as an educational "copilot" that could give students and teachers here an edge.
"I think it'll be really exciting because it's actually taking human knowledge, and the stuff we've put together as a civilisation almost, and re-presenting it to us," Mr Esterman says.
Today, he's showing principal Lucie Farrugia a hack that he hopes will shave hours from teaching workloads at Our Lady of Mercy College, an independent Catholic school in Sydney's west.
Looming national curriculum changes mean re-writing hundreds of lesson plans but, for the first time, artificial intelligence is available to help.
To demonstrate how, Mr Esterman asks ChatGPT to write a history lesson plan on popular culture and television that is mapped to curriculum notes he feeds into the bot
'It takes two minutes to come up with that, instead of 20 or 30 minutes or an hour," Mr Esterman tells the principal.
"It's given us a whole bunch of learning outcomes. It gives us an introduction. It gives teachers options to choose from — which they may not have thought of before — some student activities that they can try, formative assessments, it gives you lesson plans."
Experts agree ChatGPT could help improve Australia's teacher shortage by cutting the administrative work cited as a frustration by many who are quitting the profession.
"I think there is certainly the potential to use these new tools in ways that can make teachers' work more professionally engaging and create more time for them to do what they do best, which is teaching in the classroom," said Professor Sam Sellar, a research dean in education policy at the University of South Australia.
But ChatGPT's potential in the education system goes far beyond designing lessons for teachers.
Many experts think it's a potentially revolutionary tool for students, too. And they see an urgent need to teach kids about the technology, which is likely to be central to many of their future working lives.
The problem is, it's now banned in most Australian schools.
A powerful study buddy
The transformative power of AI tools like ChatGPT has exploded, fuelling concerns about cheating that have led to bans at all public schools except in South Australia.
But many private schools, like Our Lady of Mercy College, have embraced the chatbot.
"[We] have a duty to acknowledge the students are using these tools and to provide them with modelling, best practice, ethical use," Mr Esterman said.
So he's teaching his year 12s the advantages and pitfalls of using artificial intelligence in their history studies.
Among the pitfalls is its unreliability — it frequently spits out complete inaccuracies, fabricated data, made-up quotes and information influenced by the technology's in-built biases.
But students like Arlene Kumar are focused on the advantages.
She has been using it to sift through sources of information for a history assignment, inputting written prompts like "find me some quotes for an essay about indentured servitude in Fiji and India".
Where a Google search on the subject will produce tens of thousands of page results, ChatGPT can give a succinct answer to the request — in this case, a list of quotes from different sources and advice on how to use them in an essay.
"It's often challenging to find authentic evidence, but with the resource we're using, it gives you a bunch of evidence just like that," Arlene said.
"Even quotes, which you can go and fact-check using, you know, databases and stuff like that.
"It saves us a lot of time. Especially us students in year 12 where time is money."
Her classmate and school captain Freya Scothern had the same experience looking for quotes on her major work exploring the way female monarchs have been perceived over time.
"I have definitely found it useful," she said.
"I think one of the main things for me is efficiency, because I spend hours searching the internet looking for the perfect quotes to put in essays."
Classroom bans 'not sustainable'
The ABC understands education ministers are due to discuss ChatGPT and similar technology at their next meeting in July.
Professor Sellar is hoping they will reconsider the blanket bans in place in most states.
"Banning it, which some school systems have talked about doing, isn't going to be sustainable," he said.
"We've got a responsibility as educators to be working out how best to use these tools to improve our teaching."
He thinks it will inevitably transform the way students learn, and he can see tests like NAPLAN becoming redundant.
"ChatGPT forces us to ask that question because it shows us how basic skills can be easily replicated by machines," he said.
"ChatGPT can do the basic things which we've often focused on teaching young people."
University of Technology Sydney Industry Professor Leslie Loble, who has been examining how AI could help disadvantaged students, is concerned the bans mean public school students are being left behind.
Ms Loble, who served as a deputy secretary in the NSW Department of Education for 20 years, said that could widen a digital class divide.
"Generative AI will be disruptive, but whether that leads to positive or negative change is up to us," she said.
"That's why we need to move now to put the standards and guardrails in place to ensure it meets our expectations for equity, safety and shared benefit."
Mr Esterman, who is used to teaching history, now believes he is witnessing it as AI evolves to transform our lives.
He describes it as a natural progression in the hunt for the best information that has been the bedrock of history for millennia — from the Greek "father of history" Herodotus preparing the first investigations in 450 BC, to "modern" medieval libraries, the printing press and the information age.
"[ChatGPT] will suggest things I wouldn't think of myself," Mr Esterman said.
"It's transformative."
