ChatGPT launched last year and has since exploded in popularity. The artificial intelligence chat bot can provide written responses to almost any prompt given to it. Responses given by the AI often seem as if they were written by a human.

In education, access to this technology means there is an opportunity for students to use ChatGPT to generate essays, responses to homework questions or any other work for class.

Kent State professional development specialist Sarah Beal said many faculty members have begun to question some of where students’ work is coming from. If writing sounds different than a student’s typical tone or two students have similar answers, it can cause suspicion. 

“ChatGPT is really good at saying a lot of very beautiful sentences without any content behind them,” she said. “That also is an alarm bell that you might see; it sounds really good, but it doesn’t say anything.”

Kent State University does not have a current official statement on the consequences of students using ChatGPT, but using it could potentially fall under the umbrella of plagiarism.

Some educators believe the way classes are being taught will have to be altered in order to avoid students using answers provided by ChatGPT.

“The kinds of questions we’re asking our students to engage with at the college level are usually a little bit more in depth. We’re asking students to engage in analysis, things like citing your sources. These are the kind of things that ChatGPT just isn’t very good at,” Beal said. “If we’re asking the right types of questions of our college students, I think we should be less concerned about this technology and more excited about the possibilities that it might offer.”

Computer science professor Ruoming Jin agreed that if professors continue to give students generic questions, it will be easy for students to give answers using ChatGPT.

“For certain types of questions, we have to make it harder, more specific, so it’s not easy for students to type into the computer to answer it,” Jin said.

Since AI technology is not going away anytime soon and will likely only continue to grow, educators may have to find ways to integrate this resource into their teaching. 

“Some of the things we’ve talked to instructors about doing with their students is give students a ChatGPT generated response, and then ask students to critique the response. Is this a good response? How can we make this response better? Where could we add to this response? Where does it need citations?” Beal said. “All these skills that we want our students to learn, we can use the ChatGPT for that.”

Jin said ChatGPT can even be used to enhance learning.

“I think ChatGPT will be adding some ingredients into education,” Jin said. “I think ultimately it’s about how we can help students learn the subject better.”

Though ChatGPT may worry some educators, Jin said there are also many positive practical applications of ChatGPT which can be utilized in certain careers.

“From the industry side, we heard a lot of potential applications of ChatGPT. For instance, a lot of marketing messages or sales pitches, you can ask ChatGPT to write it or help edit it,” Jin said. “There’s a lot of similar work which could only be done by humans, but now ChatGPT can provide you with at least a draft, and a very good draft.”

Artificial intelligence is advancing more and more every day. There are already multitudes of things AI is currently able to do, such as create digital art and images. This technology will likely continue to become more prevalent as it develops further.

“Now AI can actually not only chat, but they’re also creating art, generating pictures. A lot of things which we thought only humans can do, now a computer can do it equally well, or even in some places, better,” Jin said. “I think this is going to fundamentally change a lot of industries.”

Addison Foreman is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].