Should St. Lawrence Fear or Embrace ChatGPT?
With the release of ChatGPT artificial intelligence on Nov. 30, 2022, the most advanced, publicly available artificial intelligence chatbot to date was given to the world, and its effects are still yet to be known. Much discussion has come of this in the world of academia because of ChatGPT’s ability to create texts, write essays, solve complex mathematics, and answer most questions you could have for it. This comes with the fact that sometimes the information it produces is not always accurate or just false. Even still, professors at St. Lawrence University have had a wide range of reactions seeing it as both concerning with the damage it could do to learning with the fact that it gives an opportunity to have a computer write essays for students, but at the same time acknowledging that it could also be used as a tool for furthering the education experience. In many ways, these fears of cheating are valid, but at the same time, the product of ChatGPT essays and other answers is not always what one would consider proficient in answering complex questions, with it at times leaving out details, giving false answers, and creating sources all with authority as if it is correct.
ChatGPT is a machine-learning artificial intelligence platform that specializes in text generation, language translation, text summary and analysis. This means that researchers have given an artificial intelligence platform large sets of data and given it the opportunity to expand and produce answers from that data. According to Chatgpt.pro, the number of words given to ChatGPT in its data analysis is estimated to be in the “hundreds of billions.” This allows the AI to generate human-like responses to an input question.
Success in creating proficient responses many times is successful with the AI creating essays or giving answers that one would consider passable. In the context of essays though, many feel it is missing some more humanistic feeling to its writing, even when it is giving accurate information. Director of the WORD Studio Dr. Melody Denny says that after looking into ChatGPT she finds that it is “very formulaic” and relatively easy to spot as of right now.
Even with its flaws though, ChatGPT has still been able to complete extremely impressive tasks as reported by CBS News, saying that ChatGPT was successfully able to pass a law school examination. ChatGPT is also able to summarize books for people with worthy success and can even explain confusing parts to the user.
The fear that it is indetectable is something that has also been discussed with some thinking that even though it may be formulaic it would be hard to prove the AI was used. This is also something that faculty should not be too worried about according to SLU Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics professor Dr. Lisa Torrey who says, “people are already building systems meant to detect whether text has been generated by ChatGPT.” The quick reaction of the world makes it so that it will be hard for anyone to put a paper forth in the near future without going undetected.
Although some may fear ChatGPT or outright want to ban it, people such as Government Department Chair Dr. Ronnie Olesker says that professors are “puzzling through it.” Unsure of the full capabilities of its use, many don’t want an immediate ban on this new technology because it could have some benefits pertaining to education. Dr. Denny backed this up by giving examples of having the AI create texts students could correct, using the chatbot to give students a basic outline of work to go off of, and it could also be used to rephrase sentences to create more coherent writing.
ChatGPT also has promise in language learning with the ability for it to give example conversations to people attempting to learn new languages. A YouTube account titled “Accent’s Way English with Hader” described ChatGPT as a fantastic source for learning English. It gives the user the ability to have the AI write conversations, give definitions, simulate job interviews, and correct one’s grammar and spelling with explanations.
When ChatGPT was originally released back in November, a lot of conversation around it in the student world was the fact that it was a computer that could do homework like never seen before, which rightfully created a lot of fear for professors. Some have wanted to ban the platform outright and keep education far away from this style of technology. As time goes on, many are also starting to see its benefits for education and furthermore society as a whole. We may not be able to use ChatGPT as a way to write our essays, but we may start seeing it appear in our classrooms as time progresses.