The Student’s Friend, the Educator’s Foe: Debunking ChatGPT’s contentious academic reputation

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The Student’s Friend, the Educator’s Foe: Debunking ChatGPT’s contentious academic reputation. Eva Fitzpatrick, Trinity Business School Runner up in the 2023 CoBS Student CSR article competition, explores the reaction to ChatGPT in academic circles and sees this as an opportunity to engage in long-required, positive change in teaching and learning approaches.

Eva Fitzpatrick, Trinity Business School Runner up in the 2023 CoBS Student CSR article competition, explores the reaction to ChatGPT in academic circles and sees this as an opportunity to engage in long-required, positive change in teaching and learning approaches.  

The Student’s Friend, the Educator’s Foe: Debunking ChatGPT’s contentious academic reputation by Eva Fitzpatrick.

Does ChatGPT merit such an outlook?

Eva Fitzpatrick, Trinity Business School student, explores the reaction to ChatGPT in an attempt to debunk its contentious academic reputation

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.” In the world of academia, plagiarism is a lofty offence with sizable repercussions. ChatGPT’s release on November 30th 2022 was undeniably successful, having surpassed 1 million users just five days after its release. While in terms of business productivity, it has gained notable recognition and positive feedback, alarm bells were raised amongst academic professionals with regard to the question of its role in facilitating plagiarism and undermining academic integrity.

This explosive development in technology grants students access to a platform which combines billions of data parameters, with the ability to interpret multifarious and complex questions. The result? The generation of nuanced and comprehensive essays, explanations and evaluations in seconds. Universities among other educational institutions have already been pushed to consider the reformation of learning as we know it, or are mediating the issue by introducing sizeable penalties in the event of passing off a bot’s work as one’s own.

Perhaps such a reaction isn’t merited – although academia initially had its doubts about the infamous search engine Google, it transpired to have minimal negative implications on the quality of knowledge and skillsets with countless benefits to all of academia. The penultimate question is, could AI have even superior effects again (without encroaching on the empirical foundations of academic systems), or is ChatGPT truly the ‘foe’ of those who strive for knowledge growth?

The student’s role

Alternate learning outcomes and skill development is expected of varying levels of study when it comes to students. In primary school, children learn to read, write and carry out basic math. The aim is for this to be ‘foundational’ to secondary level, which develops skills such as discipline and understanding of more complex topics. Lastly, third-level students further their learning and skills development to the degree that they are further qualified for employment. Discipline could be ruptured at second level if homework is completed by ChatGPT to enable another hour of procrastination, while employment qualification is tainted if its foundations were generated by a chatbot. In-equitability will become embedded into our society from young roots should this reach a critical level, as (a) not all students have access to ChatGPT, putting them at a disadvantage and (b) those honourable ones who consciously refrain may be at a disadvantage to their ‘cheating’ peers. Similar equitability issues were posed by the response to academic interruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who had access to more or better technology (typically the privately educated) gained an ‘unfair’ advantage as a consequence.

However, the student does stand to benefit from this revolutionary technology in more ways than the obvious convenience, without the ethical implications. In every learning environment, the educator has limited time, resources and knowledge. This is remedied by ChatGPT, unrestrained by office hours and available for feedback instantly, 24 hours a day. Its capabilities allow it to interpret tailored requests to ‘explain’ concepts a student may lack understanding in, and provide harmless inspiration that could constitute a student’s ‘research’. Prompts fed to the chatbot could aim to provide students with inspiration and fresh ideas, expanding the scope and quality of their responses.

Furthermore, Mr Ray Kurzweil, an American computer scientist, supports the notion that “The ultimate goal of AI is not to create machines that are intelligent, but to create machines that make us more intelligent.” Instead of viewing the issue as hindering students’ skill development and creating biased work, one could see it as forcing students to adopt a more in-depth understanding of the concepts at hand. It’s no secret that ChatGPT can spew nonsensical information (due to its beta formatting) which a student must be able to identify. They are pushed to interpret the information to confirm its reliability and then apply it to the given task or question. Moreover, students must competently consider the issue to generate the optimal prompt or question which they should input into the Chatbot, in turn rendering the most pertinent answer.

Do educators believe that they are stopping students from using ChatGPT by ‘banning’ it?

The Student’s Friend, the Educator’s Foe: Debunking ChatGPT’s contentious academic reputation. Eva Fitzpatrick, Trinity Business School Runner up in the 2023 CoBS Student CSR article competition, explores the reaction to ChatGPT in academic circles and sees this as an opportunity to engage in long-required, positive change in teaching and learning approaches.

It’s likely that they are very much aware of student’s usage of the AI model despite potential repercussions. A consequence of this knowledge has been the growing debate of how student assessment should be approached, and how Universities or other educational institutions instil honest ethics throughout their student body. Imperfect ‘solutions’ have already been implemented, from blocking access to its domain while connected to University Wi-Fi to scheduling faculty meetings with students in which they demonstrate their understanding of the essay they wrote. Internet-based plagiarism detection platform Turnitin, which is commonly used in third-level education institutions already has the capability to detect submissions generated by ChatGPT.

Despite this fact, students can evade detection relatively easily. While policing the authenticity of work is justifiably an important facet of educators’ work, experts have proposed superior methods for limiting plagiarism via ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.

Is the current academic system in need of reform?

Primarily, they are now faced with the task of reforming their assessment systems, especially essay-related tasks. This raises the question: Were these methods outdated or negligible in nature as it was, or has ChatGPT merely created inconvenience? The structure and content of lessons or lectures could fall under this umbrella of reform. Furthermore, educational institutions may feel obligated to introduce compulsory lessons in ethics and the reasonings behind important issues such as academic integrity. In a society that has become tarnished by malpractices from pollution to crime, perhaps this was the push required to introduce lengthy teaching on ethics and honest thinking.

The wake of paranoia this technological development has left is in some ways a dramatic overreaction, given ChatGPT’s beta format and tendency to provide inaccurate information. For the cases in which a student evidently lacks understanding or hasn’t sufficiently reviewed AI’s response, correctors would most likely easily identify the chatbot’s contribution to the submission. Notwithstanding this observation, OpenAI (the developer of ChatGPT) has unveiled the looming release of ChatGPT4. Specific details have yet to be disclosed, but reportedly this updated version will be “more creative” and “less likely to invent facts”. If this is indeed the case, educators will waste more time attempting to identify plagiarism via AI and may be forced to rapidly overhaul their teaching methods. Alternatively, students’ learning will be further facilitated and ameliorated, in addition to a positive demonstration of morality and ethics.

Where should we stand?

The Student’s Friend, the Educator’s Foe: Debunking ChatGPT’s contentious academic reputation. Eva Fitzpatrick, Trinity Business School Runner up in the 2023 CoBS Student CSR article competition, explores the reaction to ChatGPT in academic circles and sees this as an opportunity to engage in long-required, positive change in teaching and learning approaches.

The bottom line is that its unlikely classical skills will ever truly become outdated, as they command too much respect both within and outside academic realms. Besides, independently of these skills, ChatGPT wields little power. It can be a flawed weapon if brandished carelessly or backed by the wrong values. Reality is such that reform of academia as we now know it may be triggered, but really this begs the ultimate question of whether this was impending and necessary. It was developed to be a tool for ameliorating our academic potential, not encroaching upon its authenticity, but the degree of verity in this claim is debatable.

Finishing on Kentaro Toyama’s ‘law of amplification’ which he notes in his book “Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology,” the effectiveness of any resource or tool is capped by existing capabilities and knowledge. AI can only facilitate us in terms of presenting existing knowledge, but its efficient sourcing and human application of it is where we continue empirically expanding human knowledge. Critical interpretation and classic skills will remain necessary, as ChatGPT users must immunise themselves to the bias and false notions presented as a consequence of the chatbot regurgitating flawed existing information (not to mention nonsensical or incorrect data). Continued vigilance and strong morals will drive academic growth from all parties and aspects once paired with this pioneering new technological development.

Sources:

Eva Fitzpatrick

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