ChatGPT: It’s Consequences on Education and Ethics
Published Date: 04/16/2023 Author: Dora Xu
With the rapid advancement of technology and global interconnectedness through the web, the 21st century has seen huge transformations in the economy, the environment and the social culture. Amidst these developments, the artificial intelligence field has made significant strides, with Open AI’s ChatGPT recently gaining popularity. ChatGPT(Generative Pretrained Transformer) is a new cutting edge chatbot that uses supervised and reinforcement learning techniques to gather data from the internet and answer questions or queries inputted by the user.
While ChatGPT offers a plethora of benefits for future AI innovation, its huge potential also raises ethical concerns in the context of higher education. Since ChatGPT is programmed to generate text that is indistinguishable from content written by people, academic integrity will most definitely become an increasingly urgent issue. Because ChatGPT is becoming a more widely used tool in educational settings, its application needs to be more ethically and responsibly regulated. This involves not only analyzing technical accuracy, but also considering the role that AI plays in transforming the future landscape of the education system. Investigating the challenges of using ChatGPT for educational purposes, many educators are worried that students will outsource their work to ChatGPT for written work such as essays. Not only does this make identifying plagiarism more difficult, but it also might indicate a reluctance to alter learning methods for students as well. Since many criticize the efficacy of assigning students busy work because they don’t really encourage students to practice learned concepts and skills, the increased use of ChatGPT seems to be pushing professors to reduce assignments and adjust course structures to promote more active learning. This offers an opportunity for innovative learning methods to be used in education.
Many specialists believe that AI technologies will soon become a vital part of education, so further research is needed so that ChatGPT can be leveraged to boost student participation and experiential learning. While extensive research on the direct effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning has yet to be conducted, the unprecedented changes that ChatGPT has had during the most recent school semester undoubtedly suggests that educational methods need to be redefined as AI technologies become more prevalent in learning.
Sources:
