Chatting With GPT
Launched by technology company OpenAI in November 2022, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that has been heralded by Forbes as a tool that can revolutionize AI. After creating a free ChatGPT account on the OpenAI website, users can request nearly anything into the textbox and the AI will respond. ChatGPT can create stories, instructions, recipes, have conversations and much more after receiving a prompt. OpenAI processed the program with 8 million documents in order for it to store knowledge and learn how to write naturally. ChatGPT also actively learns from each interaction with users in order to better understand the context of questions and to be more clear in its responses (Atria Innovations). The versatility and precision of the AI quickly made it immensely successful, earning OpenAI over 29 billion dollars with their sale of premium memberships after just a few months of running (Reuters).
Due to its widespread applications, ChatGPT may impact many industries. For example, since it has the ability to code, software engineers could see AI playing a larger role in their job. It can do more mundane tasks that engineers prefer not to do, but is not yet developed enough to completely eradicate the need for human software engineers, as many had feared. ChatGPT also poses a threat to technical writing careers because it can easily type out instructions or articles (Business Insider). Soon after its release, students began to recognize this ability and realized the AI could help them do well in school, in part due to its popularity on TikTok. The hashtag for ChatGPT has over 1.5 billion views and there are a plethora of videos on the app showing students who have had ChatGPT write assignments for them. According to Forbes, 30% of college students say that they have used ChatGPT for classwork and one in 30 said that they use ChatGPT on every assignment. Many feel that these numbers pose a threat to academic integrity since ChatGPT can create essays or written assignments. When asked how it “feels” about students using its AI to plagiarize work, the chatbox says it does not condone academic dishonesty and wants to only be used to amplify assignments, not completely make them. Freshman Brooke Elliot has witnessed ChatGPT complete a class assignment and shares her thoughts.
“My English teacher showed us one example of a review written by a student and one written by ChatGPT,” Elliot said. “Until she told us which one was written by who, I honestly did not question why one sounded a bit more calculated than the other. It really surprised me that an AI was able to accurately recreate student writing. It is really exciting that ChatGPT has the ability to create these things in just seconds.”
Despite these functions, ChatGPT has several limitations that could be detrimental to students looking to have the AI do their schoolwork. One Slate journalist realized that, when asked for a source regarding an answer it had provided, the chatbox sent a link to an article which had no relevant information in it. Because it essentially makes up sources, students will still have to do research if a works cited or bibliography is required on an assignment they used ChatGPT for. Furthermore, researchers at the University of California, Riverside noted that the AI seems to struggle with correctly answering logic-based questions like complicated math equations. Freshman Wendy Hu similarly realized that ChatGPT’s abilities are not perfect.
“I saw one of my friends try to use ChatGPT for an essay in school,” Hu said. “Although what the AI came up with technically answered the prompt, the final product was not very good. The essay was super repetitive and did not flow together nicely. They ended up just writing the essay on their own, but it was still really shocking to see how quickly it created a slightly below average essay.”
Some education experts, however, believe that ChatGPT could easily become an advantage to students and educators alike (New York Times). It can, for example, create study materials like practice questions or mnemonic devices, explain topics in a simple way and help teachers create lesson plans geared for different types of learners. There has also been speculation that ChatGPT will be used in English classrooms much like how calculators are in math classrooms: allowed on some assignments and tests once students have mastered the basics of a topic. Others say that the inclusion of ChatGPT in classrooms could bring a new wave of teachers utilizing oral exams to make sure students do not cheat on written work using AI (New York Times). English 1 and 2 Honors teacher Maria McCloud feels that ChatGPT is ushering in a new wave of education. “At first, I thought ChatGPT posed a serious threat to education, but we always have new technology that feels very scary to our curriculum like when Wikipedia or Google came out,” McCloud said. “Like with any tool, it is here and it is not going to go away. I think we need to enhance our curriculum around ChatGPT. It will probably force us teachers to change how we think about some of our assignments, but life is always changing and teachers have to adapt with it. I am coming out of the initial shock of ‘oh my God, this is going to ruin how I teach’ and I am accepting that AI can be useful and not harmful.”
