Artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT is quickly rising in popularity, and teachers are grappling with how it fits — or does not fit — into classroom settings.
ChatGPT is a chatbot that can churn out anything from poems to essays to jokes, all with a simple request from a user. It can be hard to distinguish whether something has been written by the bot, or by a student.
Guests on Greater Boston said the tool can be used to cheat in class, but could also be a valuable tool.
Laura Meckler, national education reporter with the Washington Post, said while some people are very concerned about ChatGPT, others haven't even thought about it yet. Meckler said ChatGPT provides a creative new way to cheat, and she was "stunned" at how well the technology can produce solid academic work.
John FitzGibbon, associate director at Boston College’s Center for Digital Innovation in Learning said, "I've never seen a technology rise up so quickly in people's awareness. I've never seen it before."
FitzGibbon said students are very interested in ChatGPT and it could actually aid in learning. He said he used the tool with his own students to point out failures within responses from ChatGPT.
"This is a huge opportunity, especially in liberal arts and social sciences to rethink what we're challenging students with," FitzGibbon said.
ChatGPT is still new, and is likely to improve with more processing power. Meckler said educators can pose creative questions to students to which a bot couldn't respond well.
ChatGPT works best answering basic questions, but can't perform as well when asked for high level reasoning. She said teachers could start asking for handwritten responses or more open-ended questions so that students can't cheat with ChatGPT.
Watch: Educators struggling to detect new AI technology in students’ work
