Since OpenAI's public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the chatbot and its peers have been at the source of intense discussion within education, with many schools and universities taking hostile stances towards usage of large language models, while others have embraced the use of the tools in assignments. The usage of ChatGPT has inspired many to foresee a potential paradigm shift in education, with oral exams being proposed to assure that it cannot be used in tests.
In a blinded test, ChatGPT was judged to have passed graduate-level exams at the University of Minnesota at the level of a C+ student and at Wharton with a B to B− grade.[1] The performance of ChatGPT for computer programming of numerical methods was assessed by a Stanford University student and faculty in March 2023 through a variety of computational mathematics examples.[2] Assessment psychologist Eka Roivainen administered a partial IQ test to ChatGPT and estimated its Verbal IQ to be 155, which would put it in the top 0.1% of test-takers.[3]
In a poll conducted in March and April 2023, 38% of American students reported they had used ChatGPT for a school assignment without teacher permission. In total, 58% of the students reported having used ChatGPT.[4][5]
A major shortcoming of ChatGPT is accuracy, as some term papers written by the large-language model contained errors. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick noted that ChatGPT contained some "surprising" errors, especially in mathematics.[6]
ChatGPT's capability to write assignments for students have made it the center of intense scrutiny and censure from educators, especially with regard to essays. Some headlines for op-eds, such as one in The Atlantic, foresaw the "death" of the college application essay in particular thanks to ChatGPT.[7][8]
Many outlets both inside and outside of academia have seen ChatGPT as an existential threat to the previous methods of education. English studies courses in high school have been especially subject to the effects of ChatGPT, with California high school teacher and author Daniel Herman writing that ChatGPT would usher in "the end of high school English". Herman further argued that with ChatGPT, writing itself would become a dead skill since a machine could do it just as easily.[9] In the Nature journal, Chris Stokel-Walker pointed out that teachers should be concerned about students using ChatGPT to outsource their writing, but that education providers will adapt to enhance critical thinking or reasoning.[10] Emma Bowman with NPR wrote of the danger of students plagiarizing through an AI tool that may output biased or nonsensical text with an authoritative tone.[11]
The theory that ChatGPT will destroy education is disputed almost as widely as it is believed. Kevin Brown of Christianity Today wrote that the human brain remains consistently better able to create material than ChatGPT. Brown further argued that education in its spirit will continue to live on and that ChatGPT could only revolutionize teaching methods.[8] The New York Times' Kevin Roose also reported that ChatGPT's prohibition would never be able to be practiced effectively, noting it would be impossible to police. Roose noted that students can access the internet outside of schools, effectively rendering a ban obsolete; Roose suggested instead that teachers allow it openly for some assignments similar to calculators, and that teaching with the AI is the best approach.[12] The oral exam has also been used as an example of an instruction method which could circumvent the assignment and test students' knowledge more effectively on a 1:1 basis.[13]
One instance, as reported by Rolling Stone, resulted in a professor at Texas A&M University misusing ChatGPT to check student assignments for verifying whether an assignment utilized the large language model. ChatGPT returned a result of all students using it, and so the professor promptly returned a failing grade to all of his students. Rolling Stone noted however that ChatGPT inherently is unable to verify whether it was used to write student assignments, and a post to a Reddit community dedicated to ChatGPT received widespread attention with many attacking the professor for a lack of familiarity towards the chatbot.[14][15]
ChatGPT has been met with various bans from certain educational institutions. One of the earliest districts to ban the tool was the Los Angeles Unified School District, which blocked access to the tool less than a month after its official release.[16] The New York City Department of Education reportedly blocked access to ChatGPT in December 2022[17] and officially announced a ban around January 4, 2023.[18][19]
In February 2023, the University of Hong Kong sent a campus-wide email to instructors and students stating that the use of ChatGPT or other AI tools is prohibited in all classes, assignments and assessments at the university. Any violations would be treated as plagiarism by the university unless the student obtains the prior written consent from the course instructor.[20][21] Also in the 2023 spring semester, Harvard University banned ChatGPT and announced that usage of generative AI would be treated as any other form of academic misconduct, though some instructors allowed for usage of the tool.[22]
Some schools in the United States for the 2023–24 school year announced a repeal of their bans for ChatGPT. New York City repealed its ban in May 2023 while replacing it with a statement which encourages students to learn how to use generative AI, and in rural Washington, Walla Walla Public Schools announced it would repeal its ban of ChatGPT in student assignments.[23][24][25] A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has permitted the incorporation of ChatGPT into his students' writing process instead of banning the use of this new technology.[26] He argued that educators should teach students to use ChatGPT ethically and productively, and that it is not feasible or practical to ban students from using it.[26] He also discussed the benefits of learning to write well with AI assistance, and stressed on the importance of being responsible users of AI.[26]
Some professors have created separate college courses designed specifically to train generative AI. For example, Arizona State University professor Andrew Maynard and Vanderbilt professor Jules White both developed a new course specifically for prompt engineering generative AI chatbots.[27] Other instructors, such as Ethan Mollick at Wharton, have, in the face of inevitable use by students regardless of prohibition, not only accepted usage of generative AI but required all students to use ChatGPT in their assignments. Mollick reported to NPR that the usage of ChatGPT generally improved his students' work, using AI to further assist in the generation of ideas.[6] Some professors have focused on creating learning material and have highlighted the opportunities of using chatGPT to personalise assignments to a student's background.[28]
The education technology company Chegg became one of the most prominent business victims to ChatGPT and other large language models, with CEO Dan Rosensweig stating, in response to his company's stock price nearly being cut in half after a quarterly earnings call in May 2023, that he has become the "poster child for getting your ass kicked in the public markets by AI". Though executives at Chegg were urging Rosenweig to work on developing a ChatGPT rival as early as possible since 2020, the technology firm ultimately decided against producing a ChatGPT competitor due to GPT 3.5 not being able to sufficiently lure away Chegg's 8 million subscribers, which makes up nearly 90% of the firm's revenue.[29][30]
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Main article: Artificial intelligence content detection |
Some companies have responded to the influx of ChatGPT and generative AI among students by developing detection software which flags down essays likely written by AI. Among the first companies to develop solutions like this was Turnitin, which developed a tool to detect AI-based academic dishonesty. A corporate blog post from the company stated that the company's database of numerous student essays was used to train its own detection system. When tested by The Washington Post, though, noted that Turnitin's detector flagged an innocent student for using ChatGPT to generate the conclusion of her essay.[31] The company itself reported that its detector was not always accurate as well.[32][33]
Numerous tools such as GPTZero were created as tools to detect AI-generated text, and numerous other startups have released tools on detecting AI-written work, including OpenAI itself. However, research reports have stated that detection software often fails to detect content generated by AI, and that these tools are easy to fool.[34][35] OpenAI's official tool, Classifier, launched in January 2023, was later taken down in August 2023 due to low usage and accuracy.[36][37]