Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Since its launch in November 2022, Open AI’s Chat GPT has caused a storm in the media. Chat GPT as its best known is an AI chatbot that was developed on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3 family of language models and has been perfected by using supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. This is the latest tool being developed and used by people all around the country to help them create all sorts of templates in a matter of seconds. However, as its popularity rose, many students from all sectors of education started to use the chatbot to get around their assignments. From writing well composed essays about topics like the Civil War to writing HTML templates for websites, there is almost nothing that this language tool can’t do.
By using the tool over and over, the AI becomes smarter and harder to detect that the work being written isn’t technically original. Educators around the country are scrambling around to find ways to prevent their students from using the tool to plagiarize their assignments. Public schools in New York City are already banning the website in their schools, but what is to say that students just use their phone’s data to circumvent this measure? Besides tools like Chat GPT Zero there are almost no ways to accurately detect whether or not an essay was fully written using the tool. Students can simply ask the AI to write it like it wasn't written using AI or ask the chatbot to write it in a way that isn't detectable by plagiarism tools like TurnItIn. While the developers of the chatbot have stated publicly that they will cooperate with the education system to try to prevent “inappropriate” use of their software, anti-plagiarism tools aren’t 100% accurate as people will always find a way to work smarter and not harder. The only real way to suspect whether a piece of writing was written by AI or not is to look for the absence of human emotion, experiences, inconsistency in writing style, and filler words/repetition.
So what does this mean for the future of education? As students its important to keep in mind that in the long run tools like ChatGPT won’t be there in the case of final exams. Using AI tools won’t help you learn a subject. However, it can be used as a tool to brainstorm ideas. An example being asking the AI to write an introduction paragraph on the subject of your choice and going on from there using multiple rough drafts. Furthermore, the tool can be used to save time in formatting cover letters and resumes for recent graduates looking for job opportunities.
From personal experience, I’ve used tools like Chat GPT to help me in my marketing position to brainstorm content creation ideas for different clients that might have services that I’m not completely familiar with. For example, since I’m new to the marketing world I have little experience creating branding posts for a business and its services so I’ll use Chat GPT to help me come up with ideas relating to the industry of the client. AI can be used for the good of people and helps save time researching a topic one article at a time on Google. But, it must not be depended on solely. The beauty of AI is that these tools were created as tools to further develop your own ideas.
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