ANNISTON — Anniston City Schools held a professional development workshop this week on the responsible integration of artificial intelligence into classroom instruction. Teachers attended. Administrators were present. AI was described as a tool.

District officials emphasized that responsible use differed from irresponsible use. The workshop covered how to tell them apart. Responsible use, participants were told, involves understanding the tool's limitations. Irresponsible use, a facilitator said, involves not understanding the tool's limitations. She said the workshop was designed to produce the former.

A teacher who attended said she had come away with a clearer sense of what AI could and could not do in a classroom setting.

She was asked what it could not do.

"It can't replace a teacher," she said.

She was asked what it could do.

"A lot of things," she said. "That's what the training was about."

No students were present during the workshop. A district spokesperson noted that students would encounter the tool in classrooms, not at the workshop. The tool itself was also not present, being software rather than an attendee. It was demonstrated on a screen. It did not respond to being demonstrated at any point beyond what it was asked to respond to.

The district has not announced a timeline for full classroom implementation. Officials said implementation would proceed in a thoughtful manner. Thoughtful manner, a spokesperson clarified, means carefully and with appropriate guardrails.

The guardrails were not specified.

This reporter did not attend the workshop. This reporter uses a notebook and a pen. Both are tools.