How the Dawn of AI Could Change Everything.
Illustration by Jeslyn Oum ’24.
An email. A line of code. A two-paragraph synopsis. An explanation of a confusing topic. An Elizabethan sonnet about finding the meaning of life. If you can dream it, ChatGPT can write it (for the most part). Since its unveiling in late November 2022, ChatGPT, OpenAI’s flagship artificial intelligence chatbot, has dominated conversations across social media, classrooms, and family dinners alike.
For better or for worse, the era of artificial intelligence has arrived — and is quickly spreading through the SI community.
Illustration by Jack Quach ’23.
Importantly, ChatGPT has been put at the forefront of many students’ educational experiences, as some SI teachers have begun to switch what were once take-home essays into in-class quick writes. Megan Stecher ’24 believes that she “couldn’t do as well in a quick write as I would in taking home essays.” This raises important questions in the future of SI English classes. At the top of both students’ and teachers’ minds is, “Are there ways for at-home essays to give students more time to sit and develop their thoughts or will we have to solely resort to in-class writing to ensure that students are critically thinking about their essays without resorting to AI tools?”
“I think we [the English Department] fear our students may lose the ability to have a have an original idea, dig into that idea, develop it further, and then feel proud of that final product that they get to at the end of an essay,” AP Literature teacher Ms. Moraine said about access to the rhetorical creations of ChatGPT.
For Ms. Moraine, reconciling the innovation of artificial intelligence tools with writing and critical thinking education is a collaborative responsibility. “It’s always been the job of an educator to help with motivation, help with integrity, and help kids and students feel confident with their own ideas so that they don't think they need an easy fix,” Ms. Moraine said, adding that the realm of education also needs the tech world to assist in managing the ethical use of technology. She also shared ideas for integrating artificial intelligence to amplify classroom lessons, including to display good uses of tone and improve grammar.
Contrastingly, many teachers in the Science and Math department have more positive opinions on this new AI platform. Mr. Oliva, both a Computer Science and Physics teacher stated, “I am absolutely fascinated by it and I want to leverage it as much as I can, but I am horrified by it at the same time.” Mr. Oliva explained how he is already using Chat GPT as a teaching and learning tool by asking it to generate test questions, write lesson plans, and provide code comments. He believes you can either utilize AI to further gain knowledge and experience or misuse it to cheat on your assignments. He reiterated, “If you choose the latter, you will be left behind.”
The rise of ChatGPT has raised many questions, such as if there is an ability to detect the use of ChatGPT and similar tools in the classroom setting. This has inspired two such programs designed to detect the presence of AI: Open AI’s Text Classifier and Princeton student’s Edward Tien’s GPTZero. It might be telling that the creators of ChatGPT created their own software to detect AI written text, yet their program only correctly identifies 26% of AI-written text. 9% of the time when reading human-written text, it labels it as AI-written. Additionally, for GPTZero, in order to test one’s submission, one has to write more than 250 words for it to identify whether it is written by a bot as GPTZero struggles with short paragraphs. Stanford University has also released its own program: DetectGPT, which is still in the research phase. Although these programs cannot detect all instances of AI-written text, it seems to be only a matter of time before some organization is able to create a program that has a higher accuracy in regards to detecting AI-written work.
The CEO and creator of OpenAI, Sam Altman, spoke about AI in education in a recent interview with Connie Loizos. He agreed, “I get why educators feel the way they feel about this, but this is a preview of what we are going to see in other areas of life.” Altman stressed the importance of adapting to changing times and welcoming new technology. He brought up the compelling point, stating, “We are in a new world now. We adapted to calculators, and this is a more extreme version of that, no doubt, but the benefits of it are more extreme as well.”
However, it should be no surprise that ChatGPT is not the only artificial intelligence text-bot on the market. Google has also begun to create their own alternative to ChatGPT with Bard. Additionally, search engines like Bing have already begun integrating ChatGPT into their search engines. It is clear that ChatGPT and similar models are here to stay.
Although ChatGPT is currently free to use in its demo stage, the creators of ChatGPT have already launched a “professional plan” price of $42 per month as well as a “ChatGPT plus plan” costing $20 per month. This pricing raises important equity questions. Foremost, given that only the most wealthy will likely be able to afford such a product: will it continue to widen the wealth gap and technological divide?
Illustration by Jack Quach ’23.
For librarian Ms. Brancoli, the issue is a definite concern that comes with the advent of ChatGPT and similar technologies. While she has optimism that ChatGPT, “can be used as a real tool for education to help students take their thinking and learning to another level,” she also recognized the potential for equity issues, and — on an even larger scale — manipulating trust in AI to spread disinformation. Ms. Brancoli pointed to the Center for Humane Technology, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to monitoring the ethics of tech usage, as an example of finding solutions to for-profit companies monetizing technology that could cause increased inequity.
Fellow librarian Ms. Wenger expressed a similar cautious optimism for the future of ChatGPT. “As it evolves, I think there's so many wonderful applications for it in terms of education,” she said, “but if we approach it as a way of giving away an essential part of ourselves, then that's where the danger comes.” Ms. Wenger described the new digital tool as a way to improve the curation of books and resources for research projects.
Is ChatGPT a tool for cheating and educational disparities? The next major step in human and technological advancement? It’s most likely some blend of both, but ask anyone the question and you will receive a broad diversity of answers. And, sifting through the complexities of AI and ChatGPT while entering a new age of interacting with and communicating through technology, it’s a diversity that’s sorely needed.
Melissa Hua ’23, Philip Luongo III ’23, Reilly Moriarty ’23, Jack Quach ’23, and Jack Stecher ’23 are the Vol. 71 Editors-in-Chief.
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