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A new AI chatbot might do your homework for you. But it's still not an A+ student

Emma Bowman

Enter a prompt into ChatGPT, and it becomes your very own virtual assistant. OpenAI/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

Enter a prompt into ChatGPT, and it becomes your very own virtual assistant.

Why do your homework when a chatbot can do it for you? A new artificial intelligence tool called ChatGPT has thrilled the Internet with its superhuman abilities to solve math problems, churn out college essays and write research papers.

After the developer OpenAI released the text-based system to the public last month, some educators have been sounding the alarm about the potential that such AI systems have to transform academia, for better and worse.

"AI has basically ruined homework," said Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, on Twitter.

The tool has been an instant hit among many of his students, he told NPR in an interview on Morning Edition , with its most immediately obvious use being a way to cheat by plagiarizing the AI-written work, he said.

Academic fraud aside, Mollick also sees its benefits as a learning companion.

Opinion: Machine-made poetry is here

He's used it as his own teacher's assistant, for help with crafting a syllabus, lecture, an assignment and a grading rubric for MBA students.

"You can paste in entire academic papers and ask it to summarize it. You can ask it to find an error in your code and correct it and tell you why you got it wrong," he said. "It's this multiplier of ability, that I think we are not quite getting our heads around, that is absolutely stunning," he said.

A convincing — yet untrustworthy — bot

But the superhuman virtual assistant — like any emerging AI tech — has its limitations. ChatGPT was created by humans, after all. OpenAI has trained the tool using a large dataset of real human conversations.

"The best way to think about this is you are chatting with an omniscient, eager-to-please intern who sometimes lies to you," Mollick said.

It lies with confidence, too. Despite its authoritative tone, there have been instances in which ChatGPT won't tell you when it doesn't have the answer.

That's what Teresa Kubacka, a data scientist based in Zurich, Switzerland, found when she experimented with the language model. Kubacka, who studied physics for her Ph.D., tested the tool by asking it about a made-up physical phenomenon.

"I deliberately asked it about something that I thought that I know doesn't exist so that they can judge whether it actually also has the notion of what exists and what doesn't exist," she said.

ChatGPT produced an answer so specific and plausible sounding, backed with citations, she said, that she had to investigate whether the fake phenomenon, "a cycloidal inverted electromagnon," was actually real.

When she looked closer, the alleged source material was also bogus, she said. There were names of well-known physics experts listed – the titles of the publications they supposedly authored, however, were non-existent, she said.

"This is where it becomes kind of dangerous," Kubacka said. "The moment that you cannot trust the references, it also kind of erodes the trust in citing science whatsoever," she said.

Scientists call these fake generations "hallucinations."

"There are still many cases where you ask it a question and it'll give you a very impressive-sounding answer that's just dead wrong," said Oren Etzioni, the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI , who ran the research nonprofit until recently. "And, of course, that's a problem if you don't carefully verify or corroborate its facts."

Users experimenting with the chatbot are warned before testing the tool that ChatGPT "may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information." OpenAI/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

An opportunity to scrutinize AI language tools

Users experimenting with the free preview of the chatbot are warned before testing the tool that ChatGPT "may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information," harmful instructions or biased content.

Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, said earlier this month it would be a mistake to rely on the tool for anything "important" in its current iteration. "It's a preview of progress," he tweeted .

The failings of another AI language model unveiled by Meta last month led to its shutdown. The company withdrew its demo for Galactica, a tool designed to help scientists, just three days after it encouraged the public to test it out, following criticism that it spewed biased and nonsensical text.

Untangling Disinformation

Ai-generated fake faces have become a hallmark of online influence operations.

Similarly, Etzioni says ChatGPT doesn't produce good science. For all its flaws, though, he sees ChatGPT's public debut as a positive. He sees this as a moment for peer review.

"ChatGPT is just a few days old, I like to say," said Etzioni, who remains at the AI institute as a board member and advisor. It's "giving us a chance to understand what he can and cannot do and to begin in earnest the conversation of 'What are we going to do about it?' "

The alternative, which he describes as "security by obscurity," won't help improve fallible AI, he said. "What if we hide the problems? Will that be a recipe for solving them? Typically — not in the world of software — that has not worked out."

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What Students Are Saying About ChatGPT

Is this new chatbot the end of education as we know it? Or a useful new tool for learning? Teenagers weigh in.

By The Learning Network

By now you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, a powerful new artificial intelligence chatbot released to the public late last year that can craft jokes and working computer code, guess at medical diagnoses, and create text-based Harry Potter games.

And, yes, it can also write essays and solve problem sets, a fact that has “sent many educators into a panic,” notes Kevin Roose, a Times Tech columnist. Some school districts have already banned this new technology; others are attempting to teach students how to use it responsibly.

We invited teenagers to read Mr. Roose’s column and then tell us how they thought schools should respond to ChatGPT. Many came to the conclusion that the chatbot was a mighty, if at times unreliable, tool. Some worried that ChatGPT would rob them of their motivation, creativity and critical thinking; others that it would lead to widespread cheating. But several teenagers argued that A.I. is the future, and schools should embrace it rather than restrict it. At least one student thought all of this was an overreaction: “Everyone needs to chill out!” she wrote. “ChatGPT is certainly not the end of the world, nor the eradication of writing as a whole.”

Thank you to all those who weighed in this week, including students from Fort White High School in Fort White, Fla. ; Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Ill. ; Saint Peter High School in Saint Peter, Minn ; and the Anglo-American School of Sofia in Sofia, Bulgaria.

And a reminder that teenagers anywhere in the world can join our Current Events Conversation any time they like by responding to our daily writing prompts . We publish a selection of comments each week.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

ChatGPT is a powerful, if imperfect, tool.

My ninong recommended using ChatGPT, so I gave it a try. It was very powerful (it can write a sonnet about admission to Harvard, which I requested for fun) but inaccurate. Sometimes, ChatGPT kept changing its answers when I asked it the same question over and over. Nevertheless, I have never used it to answer my schoolwork or write my essays (I like to write, so I do that myself).

— Shekina, Philippines

I have never used ChatGPT, but I have used similar chatbots purely for exploration. When I used these chatbots I came to the conclusion that they aren’t very good at writing papers for the fact that they are very brief and often lack the level of knowledge required to write a paper on a certain topic. When you type in a prompt they just use very brief, filler words to write your response rather than actually use educated terms. I think the concept is decent but it needs to be very much advanced upon before it can be used frequently.

— Will, Saint Peter High School, MN

Personally yes, I used and experimented with ChatGPT and it is extremely useful for assignments. Not just because it answers all of your questions that you ask, but it completely destroys the use of tutors. However, it should be noted that it can be used productively but unethically because it is easier to cheat and just copy whatever the AI is providing.

— Kaden, VSN

ChatGPT is much less developed than the article here suggests. The AI uses language and sentence structure that a middle schooler would use. It could be a good inspiration tool for students who lack ideas for an essay and it could also be used in a way to teach students the proper essay structure and many more key basic things.

— Bozhidar, AAS Sofia

Some think A.I. has no place in education because it inhibits learning …

In almost all classes in school, ChatGPT should not be used. As it continues to get better and better, ChatGPT will be doing work that the student should do for them. For example, I could instead of writing this myself just have ChatGPT write this for me. How will teachers be able to know for sure that their students are actually learning what they think they are or is it just a robot doing their work for them? Students who do not use A.I. will also be affected. Instead of their lessons being centered around what mistakes the students actually make they will be based on what ChatGPT or another A.I. does.

— Henry, Glenbard West High School

I think schools should have ChatGPT blocked because it ruins the whole idea of schools. If you want to learn about something related to the assignment then you should probably resort to asking the teacher. The teacher is way more reliable than any internet source. ChatGPT can be helpful when you’re outside of school, on weekends and/or on summer break. It’s also important to know how to use real books and not always rely on the internet.

— Tim, Hinsdale Central High School

… and robs students of the motivation to do their work.

I personally believe that the use of chatbots and AI in school is dangerous for motivation and knowledge. Why write if a bot does it for me? Why learn when a bot does it better? I find this similar to the lack of motivation faced in math classes across the world when the portable calculator was invented and it is plausible that the same can happen in English classes if this AI is used; kids (especially high schoolers/teens) would love to generate their challenging assignments … Quite frankly I am terrified of ChatGPT’s growth among the younger generations, mainly for the intelligence and motivation of the kids, but also for the future of English as an art and skill to be learned, not generated.

— Jonathan, PACE High School, TX

Essentially the program is a cheat code for writing essays because all you have to do is insert a scenario and it will write for you. I think it is a bad thing for schools since students can become underdeveloped in their literacy skills — writing stories or essays — and would give people no incentive to learn and that would lead to them becoming lazy. In addition this is unfair to the teachers since they wouldn’t know if a student is cheating and they would essentially be grading an AI’s work instead of an actual humans.

— Sergio, Glenbard West High School

Students worry we’ll lose our creativity and critical thinking skills if we rely on chatbots.

One of my biggest worries is that I would rely too much on these tools and lose the capacity for critical and creative thought. I personally want to learn how to communicate myself clearly and to find my own distinctive voice. If I always rely on ChatGPT to generate material for me, I might not be challenged to improve as a writer. I’m also concerned that the information produced by ChatGPT might not be reliable or secure. As a student, I want to be able to trust the knowledge I’m gaining and avoid coming into contact with false information or damaging viewpoints.

— Faris, Hinsdale Central High School

A student’s use of generative AI to accomplish writing assignments is entirely counterproductive to the goals of an English class. As a receiver of the average American education, every English class I’ve been in has emphasized the importance of writing as a means of thinking. Indeed, to produce engaging and persuasive writing, students must learn how to research to understand a topic, thoughtfully take a position, and organize the information to be consumed. In English classes, students not only learn the grammar behind writing but also learn to become effective communicators. Communicators are how society learns to understand one another and share ideas that can help develop and change minds.

— Leslie, Ames High School

Others believe A.I. is the future and students need to get familiar with technology they’ll inevitably use someday.

It would be very unreasonable to students if their schools completely banned the tool of writing AIs. The reality is that these kids will be experiencing these AIs as they grow older, so the schools should introduce them to the students at a young age. As these students grow older and begin to work in the world, ChatGPT and other online writing AIs will be taking over. If these students are never taught about, and never learn how to operate ChatGPT in their schools, they will be unprepared for their life ahead, which will be filled with writing AIs.

— Whit, Byfield, MA

They said ChatGPT can actually aid learning.

I have used ChatGPT a number of times to test its capabilities. I was very impressed with its ability to write essays, including essays using sources. I understand that this would not necessarily be ideal for a school environment where students are meant to create their own essays and develop writing skills by doing so. However, it can also be used to give essay outlines, which I could see as being incredibly helpful for students. It also provides accurate information on historical situations, which allows for easy access to a reliable source for students.

— Rachel, Atrisco Heritage Academy

I’ve had experience using ChatGPT before and it’s been really helpful for me: When using it for personal questions, joke questions, or help on school assignments, it helps me gather research or understand the topic a lot better and faster … I also find it fun to experiment with, especially as a programmer. It’s given me new ideas and ways to think about code. However, I do think it’s important to fact check what it tells you since it’s not always accurate.

— Grange, Glenbard West High School

ChatGPT doesn’t allow for an accurate assessment of understanding. But when used on homework, something usually meant for learning and practice, it can allow a student to more clearly grasp the subject. If a student needs to look up an answer anyway, is it not far better to have a more convenient option that also very clearly explains the concept?

So when it’s assumed to be nothing more than a newer, better calculator, ChatGPT can hinder the assessment of prior learning. But when used as a learning and reinforcement tool itself, it can provide a wealth of otherwise inaccessible knowledge.

— Zac, Miami Country Day School, Florida

And that teachers should embrace this new technology …

If I was in charge of setting the rules regarding ChatGPT, I would try and make teachers implement the A.I. into their work, to allow students the ability to learn how to work alongside an A.I. and so that they won’t be tempted to cheat later on. Students have a lesser chance using ChatGPT to cheat when it’s not forbidden and is actually allowed.

— Ankitha, Cary High

People should look further into what ChatGPT can actually do because this artificial intelligence bot can do some pretty cool things. Some teachers can use this technology for making personal lesson plans for students so that they can be more successful. Or some teachers can use it to give highly detailed feedback on a student’s work.

— Sophia, Hinsdale Central High School

A teacher at my school recently asked her class to use ChatGPT to write papers on the novel they were reading in class. The students also wrote their own papers, and compared the results. I found this teaching method to be extremely accommodating and productive. Rather than framing ChatGPT as a way to cheat, and therefore encouraging students to secretly use the forbidden program, teachers can show their students how to use it to their advantage, while still keeping their own original ideas. In today’s world, technology is quickly becoming more intelligent, but I don’t think we have to fear it.

— Devin, New York

… while setting boundaries around how to use it.

Students can use ChatGPT to learn about new things, improve their vocabulary, and continue their learning when the teacher isn’t always there to help them. However, I do think its usage needs to be monitored very carefully, as students who use it as a way to get out of their work will end up falling behind in the classroom.

— Josh, Harvard Westlake

An easy tactic for schools to avoid the mess which is deciding whether to embrace or drop AI is to mandate hand-written, done-in-class assignments. This would help students develop handwriting (which is atrocious), quick thinking (as we will have a limited time to write), and fight back against procrastination.

— John, Northwest High School, Germantown, MD

I think that programs like ChatGPT are going to force teachers to change the way they assign homework. Doing more homework in class and less at home activities might help deter using AI generated work … doing more assignments that require students to talk and collaborate with other students will help counteract this.

— Noah, St Peter High School

Perhaps, though, our fears are overblown.

In my personal opinion, as a student who excels in English, (and who has never used ChatGPT in my life) I assert, to put it frankly, everyone needs to chill out! ChatGPT is certainly not the end of the world, nor the eradication of writing as a whole. Nearly all ChatGPT essays pass plagiarism tests, however, every ChatGPT fails the AI writing detection tests. Every. Single. Time. So I offer a simple solution: if you’re a teacher, after checking for plagiarism, copy and paste the essay into an AI writing detection test. It’s as simple as writing an essay with ChatGPT.

— Emilia, Illinois

Learn more about Current Events Conversation here and find all of our posts in this column .

ChatGPT isn’t the death of homework – just an opportunity for schools to do things differently

Professor of IT Ethics and Digital Rights, Bournemouth University

Disclosure statement

Andy Phippen is a trustee of SWGfL

Bournemouth University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform launched by research company Open AI , can write an essay in response to a short prompt. It can perform mathematical equations – and show its working.

ChatGPT is a generative AI system: an algorithm that can generate new content from existing bodies of documents, images or audio when prompted with a description or question. It’s unsurprising concerns have emerged that young people are using ChatGPT and similar technology as a shortcut when doing their homework .

But banning students from using ChatGPT, or expecting teachers to scour homework for its use, would be shortsighted. Education has adapted to – and embraced – online technology for decades. The approach to generative AI should be no different.

The UK government has launched a consultation on the use of generative AI in education, following the publication of initial guidance on how schools might make best use of this technology.

In general, the advice is progressive and acknowledged the potential benefits of using these tools. It suggests that AI tools may have value in reducing teacher workload when producing teaching resources, marking, and in administrative tasks. But the guidance also states:

Schools and colleges may wish to review homework policies, to consider the approach to homework and other forms of unsupervised study as necessary to account for the availability of generative AI.

While little practical advice is offered on how to do this, the suggestion is that schools and colleges should consider the potential for cheating when students are using these tools.

Nothing new

Past research on student cheating suggested that students’ techniques were sophisticated and that they felt remorseful only if caught. They cheated because it was easy, especially with new online technologies.

But this research wasn’t investigating students’ use of Chat GPT or any kind of generative AI. It was conducted over 20 years ago , part of a body of literature that emerged at the turn of the century around the potential harm newly emerging internet search engines could do to student writing, homework and assessment.

We can look at past research to track the entry of new technologies into the classroom – and to infer the varying concerns about their use. In the 1990s, research explored the impact word processors might have on child literacy. It found that students writing on computers were more collaborative and focused on the task. In the 1970s , there were questions on the effect electronic calculators might have on children’s maths abilities.

In 2023, it would seem ludicrous to state that a child could not use a calculator, word processor or search engine in a homework task or piece of coursework. But the suspicion of new technology remains. It clouds the reality that emerging digital tools can be effective in supporting learning and developing crucial critical thinking and life skills.

Get on board

Punitive approaches and threats of detection make the use of such tools covert. A far more progressive position would be for teachers to embrace these technologies, learn how they work, and make this part of teaching on digital literacy, misinformation and critical thinking. This, in my experience , is what young people want from education on digital technology.

Children should learn the difference between acknowledging the use of these tools and claiming the work as their own. They should also learn whether – or not – to trust the information provided to them on the internet.

The educational charity SWGfL , of which I am a trustee, has recently launched an AI hub which provides further guidance on how to use these new tools in school settings. The charity also runs Project Evolve , a toolkit containing a large number of teaching resources around managing online information, which will help in these classroom discussions.

I expect to see generative AI tools being merged, eventually, into mainstream learning. Saying “do not use search engines” for an assignment is now ridiculous. The same might be said in the future about prohibitions on using generative AI.

Perhaps the homework that teachers set will be different. But as with search engines, word processors and calculators, schools are not going to be able to ignore their rapid advance. It is far better to embrace and adapt to change, rather than resisting (and failing to stop) it.

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ChatGPT isn't the death of homework—just an opportunity for schools to do things differently

by Andy Phippen, The Conversation

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform launched by research company Open AI , can write an essay in response to a short prompt. It can perform mathematical equations—and show its working.

ChatGPT is a generative AI system: an algorithm that can generate new content from existing bodies of documents, images or audio when prompted with a description or question. It's unsurprising concerns have emerged that young people are using ChatGPT and similar technology as a shortcut when doing their homework .

But banning students from using ChatGPT, or expecting teachers to scour homework for its use, would be shortsighted. Education has adapted to—and embraced—online technology for decades. The approach to generative AI should be no different.

The UK government has launched a consultation on the use of generative AI in education, following the publication of initial guidance on how schools might make best use of this technology.

In general, the advice is progressive and acknowledged the potential benefits of using these tools. It suggests that AI tools may have value in reducing teacher workload when producing teaching resources, marking, and in administrative tasks. But the guidance also states: "Schools and colleges may wish to review homework policies, to consider the approach to homework and other forms of unsupervised study as necessary to account for the availability of generative AI."

While little practical advice is offered on how to do this, the suggestion is that schools and colleges should consider the potential for cheating when students are using these tools.

Nothing new

Past research on student cheating suggested that students' techniques were sophisticated and that they felt remorseful only if caught. They cheated because it was easy, especially with new online technologies.

But this research wasn't investigating students' use of Chat GPT or any kind of generative AI. It was conducted over 20 years ago , part of a body of literature that emerged at the turn of the century around the potential harm newly emerging internet search engines could do to student writing, homework and assessment.

We can look at past research to track the entry of new technologies into the classroom—and to infer the varying concerns about their use. In the 1990s, research explored the impact word processors might have on child literacy. It found that students writing on computers were more collaborative and focused on the task. In the 1970s , there were questions on the effect electronic calculators might have on children's math abilities.

In 2023, it would seem ludicrous to state that a child could not use a calculator, word processor or search engine in a homework task or piece of coursework. But the suspicion of new technology remains. It clouds the reality that emerging digital tools can be effective in supporting learning and developing crucial critical thinking and life skills.

Get on board

Punitive approaches and threats of detection make the use of such tools covert. A far more progressive position would be for teachers to embrace these technologies, learn how they work, and make this part of teaching on digital literacy, misinformation and critical thinking. This, in my experience , is what young people want from education on digital technology.

Children should learn the difference between acknowledging the use of these tools and claiming the work as their own. They should also learn whether—or not—to trust the information provided to them on the internet.

The educational charity SWGfL , of which I am a trustee, has recently launched an AI hub which provides further guidance on how to use these new tools in school settings. The charity also runs Project Evolve , a toolkit containing a large number of teaching resources around managing online information, which will help in these classroom discussions.

I expect to see generative AI tools being merged, eventually, into mainstream learning. Saying "do not use search engines" for an assignment is now ridiculous. The same might be said in the future about prohibitions on using generative AI.

Perhaps the homework that teachers set will be different. But as with search engines, word processors and calculators, schools are not going to be able to ignore their rapid advance. It is far better to embrace and adapt to change, rather than resisting (and failing to stop) it.

Provided by The Conversation

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The ultimate homework cheat? How teachers are facing up to ChatGPT

ChatGPT took the internet by storm when it launched in late 2022, impressing by generating stories, poems, coding solutions, and beyond. Its potential to answer questions has seen New York City's education board ban it from schools - but could it really provide a homework shortcut?

By Tom Acres, technology reporter

Monday 9 January 2023 13:11, UK

"Have I seen this somewhere before?"

It's a question teachers have had to ask themselves while marking assignments since time immemorial.

But never mind students trawling through Wikipedia, or perusing SparkNotes for some Great Gatsby analysis, the backend of 2022 saw another challenge emerge for schools: ChatGPT.

The online chatbot, which can generate realistic responses on a whim, took the world by storm by its ability to do everything from solving computer bugs, to helping write a Sky News article about itself .

Last week, concerned about cheating students, America's largest education department banned it.

New York City 's teaching authority said while it could offer "quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success".

Of course, that's not going to stop pupils using it at home - but could they really use it as a homework shortcut?

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Teachers vs ChatGPT - round one

First up, Sky News asked a secondary school science teacher from Essex, who was not familiar with the bot, to feed ChatGPT a homework question.

Galaxies contain billions of stars. Compare the formation and life cycles of stars with a similar mass to the Sun to stars with a much greater mass than the Sun.

It's fair to say that ChatGPT let the mask slip almost immediately, as you can see in the images below.

Asking ChatGPT to answer the same question "to secondary school standard" prompted another detailed response.

The teacher's assessment?

"Well, this is definitely more detailed than any of my students. It does go beyond what you'd expect for GCSE, so I would be very suspicious if someone submitted it. I would assume that they'd copied and pasted from somewhere."

Teachers vs ChatGPT - round two

Next was a Kent primary school teacher, also unfamiliar with ChatGPT, who gave it a recent homework task.

Research a famous Londoner and write a biography of their lives, including their childhood and their career achievements.

No problem, said ChatGPT, though it's fair to say that any nine-year-old who submitted the answer below is either being fast-tracked to university or going straight into a lunchtime detention.

"Even just glancing at that, I'd say they copied it straight off the internet," said the teacher.

"No 11-year-old knows the word tumultuous."

'Key decisions' facing schools

So just as copying straight from a more familiar website is going to set alarm bells ringing for teachers, so too would lifting verbatim from ChatGPT.

But pupils are among the most internet-savvy people around, and ChatGPT's ability to instantly churn out seemingly textbook-level responses will still need to be monitored, teachers say.

Jane Basnett, director of digital learning at Downe House School in Berkshire, told Sky News the chatbot presented schools with some "key decisions" to make.

"As with all technology, schools have to teach students how to use technology properly," she said.

"So, with ChatGPT, students need to have the knowledge to know whether the work produced is any good, which is why we need to teach students to be discerning."

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

Given its rapid emergence, Ms Basnett is already exploring how her school's anti-plagiarism systems will cope with auto-generated essays.

But just as teachers must consider teaching students about the benefits and pitfalls of using AI, Ms Basnett said her colleagues should also be open to its potential.

"ChatGPT is incredibly powerful and as a teacher I can see some benefits," she said.

"For example, I can type in a request to create a series of lessons on a particular grammar point, and it will create a lesson for me. It would take a teacher to analyse the created lesson and amend it, because the suggested lesson, whilst not bad, was not ideal. But, the key elements were there and it could be really useful.

"I could imagine using a created essay from ChatGPT and working through it with my students to examine the merits and faults of the essay."

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Dr Peter Van der Putten, assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said institutions which chose to prohibit or ignore the technology would only be burying their head in the sand.

"It's there, just how like Google is there," said Dr Van der Putten.

"You can write it into your policies for preventing plagiarism, but it's a reality that the tool exists.

"Sometimes you do need to embrace these things, but be very clear about when you don't want it to be used."

'Bull****er on steroids'

For students and teachers alike, it's an opportunity to improve their digital literacy.

While it has proved its worth when tasked with being creative, such as to problem-solve or come up with ideas, true comprehension and understanding remains beyond it.

Developer OpenAI acknowledges answers can be "overly verbose" and even "incorrect or nonsensical", despite sounding legitimate in most cases, like some sort of desperate, underprepared job interviewee.

As Dr Van der Putten says, ChatGPT is often little more than a "bull*****er on steroids".

Teaching students about those limitations is the best way to ensure they don't over rely on it - even in a pinch.

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ChatGPT has entered the classroom: how LLMs could transform education

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Andy Extance is a freelance writer in Exeter, UK.

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Despite risks, some educators see huge potential in using artificial-intelligence chatbots to enhance teaching and learning. Credit: Riccardo Venturi/Contrasto/eyevine

Last month, educational psychologist Ronald Beghetto asked a group of graduate students and teaching professionals to discuss their work in an unusual way. As well as talking to each other, they conversed with a collection of creativity-focused chatbots that Beghetto had designed and that will soon be hosted on a platform run by his institute, Arizona State University (ASU).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03507-3

OpenAI. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774 (2023).

Wang, X. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10635 (2023).

UNESCO. Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research (UNESCO, 2023).

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Singh, P. et al . In Proc. Int. Conf. Learning Sciences 1521–1524 (2022).

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Educator Guide: Homework Help? ChatGPT is Poised to Disrupt Education

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About this guide

Playing around with ChatGPT is enormously fun, and the technology can be useful. But there are pitfalls too. In this Guide, students will learn about AI and the benefits and challenges posed by the chatbot.

This Guide Includes:

• Exercise type: Discussion
• Topic: Artificial Intelligence

Can AI fool you?

• Exercise type: Comprehension

What can ChatGPT really do?

ChatGPT Homework

Academics worry about students using ai tools to write their homework., about chatgpt homework.

ChatGPT can do things that previously required human judgment and analysis, like writing full essays or solving complex problem sets.

Example use cases

• You can paste in entire academic papers and ask it to summarize it
• You can ask it to find an error in your code and correct it and tell you why you got it wrong

In one example ChatGPT got a 100/100 on my Computational Physics problem set .

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Students are using ChatGPT to do their homework and we should help them

What if AI writing tools could actually make students smarter?

The trickle of news about AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Bing has become a deluge, and kids are drinking from the AI fountain to write homework. Generative AI tools seem to be developing at a pace that would frighten a sci-fi horror robot. We need to stop banning in the classroom and filtering for the new technology and instead embrace it. The AI dam has already burst, it’s too late to hold back the flood. It’s time to build a raft.

He said great, and we’ve already used all of those metaphors ... So, I went to the new Bing

Ok, here’s the now-standard part of every generative AI story where I admit that some portion of what I just wrote was written by an AI. Not really, I wrote all of the above, but I needed a new idea. When I pitched this story, I told my editor-in-chief that the genie was out of the bottle. The cat was out of the bag. Pandora’s box was open. He said great, and we’ve already used all of those metaphors.

So, I went to the new Bing and I told it that I needed a creative way to say that the cat is out of the bag. It suggested that the genie is out of the bottle. I said I needed a new way for both of those, it suggested Pandora’s box.

So I finally said that “I want to find a very interesting and new way to say that the cat is out of the bag or the genie is out of the bottle or you can't close pandora's box but without using a cliche that everyone has heard before”

Among its 10 suggestions: “The dam has been breached, and the flood of revelations cannot be stopped.”

I like the dam metaphor. I taught Shakespeare every year, and Shakespeare loved a good pun, or a “quibble,” as it was called. Samuel Johnson complained that puns were irresistible to Shakespeare . “A quibble … is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire.”

Come up with a better dam idea or ask Bing

I could have racked my brain and thought of a better way to say that the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to using generative AI to create student work. I tried using synonym dictionaries, but they don’t encompass turns of phrase, only single words or idioms. 

Usually, I bother my TechRadar colleagues to think up a better idea, but much of our staff is on holiday today. Besides, this is a story about AI, so I talked to the AI. 

Here are the cliches that Bing suggested, even though I told it to avoid cliches 

• “The curtain has been drawn back” 
• “the mask has been lifted”
• “the code has been cracked”
• and “the forbidden fruit has been tasted” among others

It offered the genie and bottle, even though I asked it to specifically avoid that cliche. It mentioned Pandora twice, once with a box and once with a jar.

Bing didn’t give me a great idea, or even a usable idea, but it did get me started. Once I saw an idea I liked, I added my own context. I thought I might make some good dam puns with a dam breach metaphor (take the official Hoover Dam tour if you need help, they embrace it fully).

What I created is my work, but I used Bing to inspire an idea, the way I might use music, or conversation, or even reading other sites.

Cell phones are in classrooms to stay, so is AI

I started teaching high school English in the month following the 9/11 attacks. I taught in Brooklyn, New York. It was the turning point for students carrying cell phones in school. Parents insisted. They must be able to reach their child in an emergency, and we’d seen an emergency. The effects were visible, audible, even olfactory. 

Between then and now, a shift occurred. Phones were reluctantly accepted, then openly battled. There was a period of intolerance when students were harshly punished for using phones. Phones were taken, shunned, and ostracized. Finally, reality sunk in. 

The best way to keep students from being distracted by a smartphone is to make them use the smartphone for class. Keep them busy on the smartphone. You won’t have time for TikTok or Twitch if you’re using your phone for research, or watching an educational video on the phone, or using the phone as a controller for a classroom game.

Teachers need to embrace generative AI, because it isn’t going away. I started teaching in 2001. In 22 years from now, ChatGPT and Bing won’t be novelties, they will be primitive precursors to the genius-level AI writing to come. I can’t even imagine what two decades will produce, or allow students to produce.

It isn’t that the dam has burst. The technological ice caps have melted. The flood is coming, and modern teaching lives on the coastline. It’s time to build classrooms on stilts.

We can't return to clay tablets and paper filing cabinets

This isn’t new. When I first brought a laptop to class, teachers worried about the distraction. Then teachers worried about losing the art of handwriting. Whither goest cursive?

In my last year teaching, in 2022, my class was 100% paper free, just like every modern office for which I’ve worked. My students worked on the laptops that the school provided. How far we’ve come.

I’m sure that when the first kid showed up with paper and a quill, all of the kids writing cuneiform onto clay tablets were jealous. Teachers probably called it cheating and lamented the end of pictograms. 

Here’s the dirty secret about writing today – most people are terrible at it. I taught an Honors English class in a wealthy county near Washington, D.C., and none of my students ever produced a piece of writing with the level of grammar, usage, and spelling precision of ChatGPT.

Should we be teaching students to live up to the abilities of a computer? No, we should be teaching them to use the computer to their advantage. The computer should do what it does best. The student should control the machine.

We don’t handwrite today because printers do a better job. We’re not going back to handwriting. We don’t keep paper files any more. We use computers to memorize these things.

What if generative AI writing actually made our students’ work better, the way that the best laptops , scientific calculators, and the best smartphones are now helping students produce higher-quality work?

The student needs to be the teacher for AI learning

Evaluation is ... usually the task that falls to the teacher. It doesn’t need to be.

The good news is that AI is still bad, which means that students can’t just swim with the tsunami and hope that the current arrives at their destination. They need to learn to double-check the sources that AI uses, and correct any errors it makes. But accuracy isn’t the only problem. 

I asked Bing for a creative explanation and it gave me ten possibilities, and only one or two seemed worth using. Three of the answers ignored my request entirely and used examples I tried to restrict. 

Students will be able to feed test questions into generative AI and get an answer, but will the answer be good? Will it be interesting and creative? That’s what students will need to determine. 

This is good news, because this is better learning! The student is usually the person regurgitating facts and analysis for a test. The teacher evaluates whether or not it is good, because the teacher has expertise. In order for students to effectively evaluate whether the AI product is good, they will need to learn. They’ll need to learn quite a bit. 

It’s a new model, that teachers would need to teach students to a level of evaluation. This is a higher level of learning, if you follow the old Bloom’s Taxonomy that teachers sometimes use. Bloom’s is a hierarchy of learning tasks, from least to the most complicated.

While true creativity requires a higher level of knowledge, most tests and assignments are only asking for analysis and understanding. Evaluation is near the top of our learning objectives, and of course it is, since it’s usually the task that falls to the teacher. It doesn’t need to be.

When the generative AI dam breaks (has broken), we’ll be flooded with cheating and deceit, but we can build a new educational raft to float above that. The generative AI opportunity for education could eventually lead to new opportunities to achieve a higher level of learning than ever before.

Writing with AI won’t just be good for students, it will be good for teachers and the class, if teachers can learn how to keep their heads above water. I’ve been a teacher and I can tell you that this is what teachers have been doing for longer than technology has existed.

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Phil Berne is a preeminent voice in consumer electronics reviews, having reviewed his first device (the Sony D-EJ01 Discman) more than 20 years ago for eTown.com. He has been writing about phones and mobile technology, since before the iPhone, for a variety of sites including PCMag, infoSync, PhoneScoop, and Slashgear. He holds an M.A. in Cultural Theory from Carnegie Mellon University. 

Phil was the internal reviewer for Samsung Mobile, writing opinions and review predictions about top secret new devices months before launch. He left in 2017. He worked at an Apple Store near Boston, MA, at the height of iPod popularity. He has been a High School English teacher at Title I schools, and is a certified Lifeguard. His passion is smartphones and wearables, and he is sure that the next big thing will be phones we wear on our faces.

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Outsmart ChatGPT: 8 Tips for Creating Assignments It Can’t Do

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Since the latest version of ChatGPT emerged late last year, educators have been puzzling over how to reconcile traditional writing instruction with tech that can churn out everything from essays to haikus with uncanny sophistication.

Some educators contend ChatGPT can be a learning tool, while others say it’s more likely to be used as a cheating tool. In fact, more than a quarter of teachers say they’ve caught students using ChatGPT to cheat, according to a survey from Study.com, an online learning platform .

That raises the question: Can educators remove students’ temptation to use ChatGPT and other so-called “large language models” to plagiarize by coming up with assignments that the ChatGPT won’t be able to handle? If yes, what might those assignments look like?

We asked educators and experts on all sides of the broader debates about ChatGPT to give us some strategies for AI-proofing assignments. Here’s what they told us:

1. Ask students to write about something deeply personal

Consider having students delve into their scariest moment, the biggest challenge they ever overcame, or even answer a quirky personal question: Would you rather be the bucket or the sand?

It’s difficult at this point for AI to fake highly personal writing, said Joshua Rosenberg, an assistant professor of STEM education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. (For the record, Rosenberg thinks it’s valuable for teachers to incorporate AI writing tools into some assignments.)

To be sure, even with these personal essays, students “could make it up,” acknowledged Kristin Daley Conti, a 7th grade science teacher at Tantasqua Junior High School in Massachusetts. But most of her middle schoolers are too eager to share their stories to outsource the job to AI, she explained. “They like to center things around themselves,” she said.

One wrinkle: Writing only about personal heroes or big life challenges isn’t as effective as other types of assignments for teaching students the reasoning and critical thinking skills that good writers must master, said Michelle Brown, the founder and CEO of CommonLit, an online reading program.

“I cringe a little bit at the idea that we will overcorrect and make a lot of writing personal,” she said. “What makes writing instruction good is that you’re synthesizing complex information from a complex text or complex sources. So, if we’re trying to make our assignments ChatGPT-proof that could be one way, but I worry about the consequences on student learning.”

2. Center a writing assignment around an issue specific to the local community

ChatGPT doesn’t have a strong background in hyperlocal issues, though that is likely to change as the tool becomes more sophisticated, experts say. But for now, educators may be able to minimize how much help ChatGPT can be on a particular assignment by grounding it in the school community—maybe even by asking students to write about a new school rule or the student council election.

Teachers could also ask their students to connect information about the water quality in a nearby pond the class studied to global patterns in environmental conservation. “There probably just isn’t a lot of data” available online about such a small body of water, Rosenberg said.

Did We Miss Anything?

Got a tip for making assignments ChatGPT-proof not mentioned here?

📧 Email [email protected] with your ideas.

3. Direct students to write about a very recent news event

At this point, ChatGPT can’t capture much information about things that happened just days earlier, Rosenberg said. Teachers could ask students to compare a very recent news event to a historical one, say the balloon that was reportedly sent by the Chinese government to spy on the United States with the Cuban missile crisis.

While ChatGPT may be able to spit out some sort of answer, it is likely to be muddled, Rosenberg said. “The model might generate just factually wrong things about time-sensitive events,” he said. “That can be a good cue to teachers that something’s fishy.”

4. Have students show or explain their work

In math class, students usually show how they arrived at a particular answer to get credit for solving a problem. That concept could apply to writing, Rosenberg said. For instance, teachers could prompt students to detail their brainstorming process, explaining why they choose to write about a particular topic.

Teachers could also ask questions such as: “How did you decide to structure your paper this way? Did you just start writing or did you think ‘my first paragraph is going to be on this and then my second paragraph on this?’” Rosenberg said. “That could just hold students a little bit more accountable for their process of writing.”

On a similar note, two literacy focused technology nonprofits, CommonLit and Quill, would love to see developers come up with new technology that analyzes keystrokes or various versions of a draft to decide whether a particular piece of writing was produced by a human or a robot, a more sophisticated process-based approach to discouraging cheating.

5. Ask students to give an oral presentation, along with the written work

One way to make this work: Ask students to record themselves on a video platform such as FlipGrid, talking about their essay, story, report, or other assignment, Daley Conti, the middle school science teacher, suggested.

That could deter cheaters. And it would provide students who did get help from AI in completing their assignment with an incentive to at least learn the content. “Even if they did get it from ChatGPT, they would have had to read it, digest it, and then talk about it,” Daley Conti said.

6. Return to a pre-digital age and ask students to handwrite their essays in class

This low-tech solution seems obvious. And it might be the most surefire way to make certain that students aren’t getting help from AI or even their parents or other students in the class.

Sal Khan, founder of one of the most prominent education technology tools, Khan Academy, sees value in having students do their writing the old-fashioned way , even as he thinks K-12 schools should help students learn to write using ChatGPT as well.

“One mitigation, which isn’t a bad idea, is to have students do more writing in class periods, in front of you,” Khan said in an interview. “I think it’s a good idea to do more of your actual writing and workshopping in class. The best writing classes are the ones where it’s like a real writers’ workshop, and kids are writing all the time. And the teacher and peers are giving each other feedback.”

7. Put project-based learning to work

Teachers could lean towards big, multi-disciplinary projects that an AI essay “isn’t going to be an appropriate measure of,” said Joseph South, the chief learning officer for the International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit.

For instance, he said, several school districts explored water quality in different parts of the country for a social studies course, looking at different policies in different states and cities. They tested the water in their own communities, looking for contaminates. Then they created graphs and charts showing the impact of local policies on local water supplies, and presented their findings.

“ChatGPT was never going to do that project for them,” South said. “It’d be impossible to cheat on that project with it. And the kids didn’t want to cheat because they were doing something really cool and interesting and relevant to their lives.”

If students are “taking pride in their work, they don’t want a robot to write it,” he said.

8. Run the assignment through ChatGPT before giving it to students

Maybe asking students for their take on a local issue—the school board election, perhaps—is one way to get around the power of ChatGPT. One hiccup: If users point ChatGPT to specific sources, it will use them in crafting a response to a prompt. So, if students put in links to a few articles in the local newspaper about the election, the tech may produce a surprisingly sophisticated take.

Teachers hoping to come up with assignments the tool can’t handle should keep that in mind, said Peter Gault, the founder and executive director of Quill, a literacy-focused technology nonprofit. “The trick is if you could say read this article, and then give a link and then do it and then see how it performs,” he said.

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Educators battle plagiarism as 89% of students admit to using openai’s chatgpt for homework.

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Who's teaching who?

A large majority of students are already using ChatGPT for homework assignments, creating challenges around plagiarism , cheating, and learning. According to Wharton MBA Professor Christian Terwisch, ChatGPT would receive “a B or a B-” on an Ivy League MBA-level exam in operations management. Another professor at a Utah-based university asked ChatGPT to tweet in his voice - leading Professor Alex Lawrence to declare that “this is the greatest cheating tool ever invented”, according to the Wall Street Journal . The plagiarism potential is potent - so, is banning the tool a realistic solution?

New research from Study.com provides eye-opening insight into the educational impact of ChatGPT , an online tool that has a surprising mastery of learning and human language. INSIDER reports that researchers recently put ChatGPT through the United States Medical Licensing exam (the three-part exam used to qualify medical school students for residency - basically, a test to see if you can be a doctor). In a December report, ChatGPT “performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any training or reinforcement.” Lawrence, a professor from Weber State in Utah who tested via tweet, wrote a follow-up message to his students regarding the new platform from OpenAI: “I hope to inspire and educate you enough that you will want to learn how to leverage these tools, not just to learn to cheat better.” No word on how the students have responded so far.

Machines, tools and software have been making certain tasks easier for us for thousands of years. Are we about to outsource learning and education to artificial intelligence ? And what are the implications, beyond the classroom, if we do?

Considering that 90% of students are aware of ChatGPT, and 89% of survey respondents report that they have used the platform to help with a homework assignment, the application of OpenAI’s platform is already here. More from the survey:

• 48% of students admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had it write an essay, and 22% had it write an outline for a paper.
• 72% of college students believe that ChatGPT should be banned from their college's network. (New York, Seattle and Los Angeles have all blocked the service from their public school networks).
• 82% of college professors are aware of ChatGPT
• 72% of college professors who are aware of ChatGPT are concerned about its impact on cheating
• Over a third (34%) of all educators believe that ChatGPT should be banned in schools and universities, while 66% support students having access to it.
• Meanwhile, 5% of educators say that they have used ChatGPT to teach a class, and 7% have used the platform to create writing prompts.

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A teacher quoted anonymously in the Study.com survey shares, “'I love that students would have another resource to help answer questions. Do I worry some kids would abuse it? Yes. But they use Google and get answers without an explanation. It's my understanding that ChatGPT explains answers. That [explanation] would be more beneficial.” Or would it become a crutch?

Modern society has many options for transportation: cars, planes, trains, and even electric scooters all help us to get around. But these machines haven’t replaced the simple fact that walking and running (on your own) is really, really good for you. Electric bikes are fun, but pushing pedals on our own is where we find our fitness. Without movement comes malady. A sedentary life that relies solely on external mechanisms for transport is a recipe for atrophy, poor health, and even a shortened lifespan. Will ChatGPT create educational atrophy, the equivalent of an electric bicycle for our brains?

Of course, when calculators came into the classroom, many declared the decline of math skills would soon follow. Research conducted as recently as 2012 has proven this to be false. Calculators had no positive or negative effects on basic math skills.

But ChatGPT has already gone beyond the basics, passing medical exams and MBA-level tests. A brave new world is already here, with implications for cheating and plagiarism, to be sure. But an even deeper implication points to the very nature of learning itself, when ChatGPT has become a super-charged repository for what is perhaps the most human of all inventions: the synthesis of our language. (That same synthesis that sits atop Blooms Taxonomy - a revered pyramid of thinking, that outlines the path to higher learning ). Perhaps educators, students and even business leaders will discover something old is new again, from ChatGPT. That discovery? Seems Socrates was right: the key to strong education begins with asking the right questions. Especially if you are talking to a ‘bot.

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• Math GPT - Plus (Yearly) ฿699.00
• Math GPT - Plus (Monthly) ฿299.00
• Math GPT - Plus (Weekly) ฿199.00
• Math GPT - Plus (Yearly) ฿1,290.00
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Family Sharing

Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when family sharing is enabled., more by this developer.

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