As a new artificial intelligence (AI) language model, ChatGPT was born on November 30, 2022. Despite still being in its trial phase, it has already had a tremendous impact. Higher Education Needs to get prepared.
On January 28, the website "Insider" published an article stating that "ChatGPT has caused indescribable chaos in just two months."
Although ChatGPT was born last year, some media outlets consider 2023 as the first year of ChatGPT, indicating that this year will be one in which people have to face the chaos caused by ChatGPT.
The surprise and anxiety brought by ChatGPT
Since its birth, ChatGPT has been the focus of intense attention from people, with many registrants from all over the world, but often they are told "it is already fully operational" and cannot be registered.
After a few months, I finally succeeded in registering not long ago, and the results of some tests I witnessed are both surprising and admirable.
One of my experiences was issuing a command in English, "Please write an (English) poem that contains snow and forests." In less than a minute, ChatGPT gave me a nearly perfect English poem. After I posted it in my friend circle, many friends were deeply surprised and admired, "The level is very high! Well written! So amazing!"
Of course, ChatGPT's functions go far beyond this. According to "insider" reports, researchers recently made ChatGPT pass a very difficult exam in the United States - the US medical license exam. The exam consists of three parts, and the report says that ChatGPT "achieved or approached the pass threshold in all three exams without any training or reinforcement." This result is naturally praised by people.
However, behind the praise, people should see the anxiety and panic that ChatGPT brings to the academic community.
Many people quickly recognized the enormous threat that ChatGPT posed to writing soon after its release. For example, The Atlantic magazine published two sensational articles within 10 days of ChatGPT's creation, titled "The End of the College Essay" and "The Death of High School English," respectively.
By comparing the two articles, it becomes clear that they address the same issue: the writing skills that have been taught to students through language and general education, from middle school to college, have reached a dead end. Academic papers, particularly undergraduate papers, have long been at the core of humanities education, teaching students how to research, think, and write. However, the emergence of artificial intelligence has caused this entire tradition to be completely overturned.
According to "The End of the College Essay," Kevin Bryan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, was deeply shocked by ChatGPT's performance and believed that he could no longer assign homework to his students.
The emergence of this new phenomenon and its consequences caught engineers who construct language technology and language education workers off guard.
Reaction to ChatGPT
Although the coming of the era of artificial intelligence had been discussed several years ago, when ChatGPT came crashing like a tsunami, the academic world was caught off guard. The main response so far has been policy blocking, banning or restrictive use.
Due to the emergence of students using AI-generated content to impersonate personal assignments, and the difficulty in proving plagiarism caused by artificial intelligence in current academic rules, many educational departments, including those in the UK, France and the US, have enacted policies prohibiting the use of ChatGPT in schools.
Of course, the academic world has been affected even more. On January 26th, the editor-in-chief of Science, Jeremy Berg, published an editorial titled "ChatGPT is fun, but it can't be the author," saying that in less than two months, ChatGPT had become a cultural sensation and had a serious impact on the scientific and academic communities.
The impact of ChatGPT on writing scientific papers is very worrying. He said that in a recent study, a large number of abstracts created by ChatGPT were submitted to academic reviewers, but only 63% were found to be detected. He expected that in the future, more text generated by artificial intelligence will be used.
Berg emphasized that for many years, authors of the Science series of journals have signed a license agreement stating that "the work is original." For the journal, this is enough to indicate that the text written by ChatGPT is unacceptable - after all, it is plagiarized from ChatGPT.
Berg said that they are now updating their editorial rules, emphasizing that text, numbers, images or graphics generated by ChatGPT (or any other artificial intelligence tool) cannot be used in works. He stressed that artificial intelligence programs cannot be authors. Violations will constitute scientific misconduct, no different from image tampering or plagiarism.
Two days before the editorial was published in Science, Nature also published an article pointing out that tools such as ChatGPT threaten the transparency of science, and declared that their basic rule is that no artificial intelligence tool will be accepted as a signatory author of a research paper, as any author assumes responsibility for the published work, which artificial intelligence tools cannot do. The article also pointed out that if researchers use such programs, they should be explained in the methods or acknowledgements section.
Many scientific journals, including Cell and The Lancet, have also released rules that are largely consistent with this.
Universities were forced to revise anti-plagiarism regulations
The use of ChatGPT among students has been widespread, according to a recent informal survey conducted by the Stanford Daily. In an article published by Forbes on January 28, it was reported that 89% of students admitted to using ChatGPT to complete homework, while educators are struggling to combat academic dishonesty. To understand the severity of the issue, it is worth examining the detailed survey results provided by Forbes.
Among the findings, 48% of students admitted to using ChatGPT for home tests or quizzes, while 53% used it to write a paper and 22% used it to write a paper outline. Moreover, 72% of college students believe that ChatGPT should be banned on their university network.
Meanwhile, among university professors who are aware of ChatGPT, 72% are concerned about its use for cheating, and over a third of educators believe that ChatGPT should be banned in schools, especially universities, while 66% support its use by students.
The reason why students are flocking to this tool is due to its powerful features. According to Professor Tawich of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, ChatGPT can achieve a "B or B-" score in operations management exams at the MBA level of the Ivy League. According to The Wall Street Journal, a professor at Weber State University in Utah asked ChatGPT to write a tweet in his voice, and the program produced a dozen messages in just a few minutes. The professor's reaction was, "Wow! This is the greatest cheating tool ever."
As a result, whether to ban ChatGPT has become a question that people need to face. Of course, more teachers are thinking about how to deploy strategies to prevent cheating in their courses and study guides, and ensure that students learn to think independently.
Some US universities have already incorporated new technologies into their academic integrity policies. Universities such as the University of Washington and the University of Vermont have modified their academic integrity policies to include the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT within the scope of academic misconduct such as plagiarism.
Other Usage of ChatGPT
There are teachers who have a positive attitude towards ChatGPT, as per reports. Maurice Moravec, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, encourages his students to use ChatGPT, believing that artificial intelligence is already a part of our world, and its results should be shared. He does, however, express concern about the impact of AI on classroom assessments, and believes that educators should keep up with the changes in the world.
Some supporters of ChatGPT view it as an extension of Grammarly, an AI program that corrects grammar in English writing. The Chronicle of Higher Education has announced a webinar to discuss "artificial intelligence tools for students" with the University Innovation Alliance, focusing on how to make AI a student-centered tool.
It is no longer a question of whether universities will adopt AI, but how they will ethically and effectively apply it to improve student experiences. It is hoped that experts in education, academia, and technology will come together to discuss how higher education institutions can benefit from AI. The future of AI in education remains to be seen.
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