Should Schools Use ChatGPT?
ChatGPT has raised the eyebrows of many across the world since its release in late November of 2022. Questions about the morality and usefulness of this AI have been asked and many people still don’t have answers. While I have little to no knowledge of this program from the get-go, I find myself drawn in by the problems and debates that it’s started.
ChatGPT is “a language model trained to produce text [and] was optimized using Reinforced Learning with Human Feedback,” according to the Open AI website. From what I understand, ChatGPT is trained to recognize the contents of an input, connect similarities in the input with the knowledge that it has been fed, and spit back a response. People can give it feedback that it will internalize and use in later responses. For instance, if I asked it about places to eat and it responded with the word horse, I could signify that what I received was not helpful. Then, whenever someone would ask about places to eat, it would know not to respond with the word horse.
While this seems harmless based on this information alone, many people do not share that same sentiment. Some people see it as a way to cheat your way through an assignment, or as an inaccurate source for information. However, I believe that they only think this way because they don’t know how to use the program properly.
This prejudice against ChatGPT reminds me of a similar one regarding Wikipedia. Most teachers tend to shun the website when it comes to citations on projects, which is reasonable. Wikipedia is not a source to be cited, but rather an area of stepping stones to find more in-depth information. Taking the overview that it gives you of a certain topic, the footnotes in Wikipedia reference more reliable and easily citable sources to use. It’s a way to get a good start on learning a topic. However, it does have its faults, one of the most well known being the fact that its articles are easily editable. The Wikipedia website states, “Another problem is that anyone can edit articles at any time, so people can vandalize articles, as long as they have an account.”
I took some inspiration from people on what to ask Chat, and as a result I’ve found two things that it does pretty well. It’s very good for getting started on a project. For example, it’s really helpful for giving ideas for stories. When I’m bored, I like to write stories to pass the time. Sometimes writer’s block strikes and I’d never know what to do with myself, but now I’ll be prepared for it. I can rely on ChatGPT to give me interesting ideas to help me get started. I think that could be useful for writers and people who need that extra push of creativity. They would still do the work themselves, but ChatGPT gives them a slight nudge in the right direction.
I’ve also found that it’s an interesting way to start learning about a new topic. Say that you want to learn about the stock market. If you put in the prompt “Explain the stock market as if I were a high school student,” it will generate a response that takes the main ideas of the stock market and breaks them into easily digestible chunks so that the information doesn’t fly over your head. If a topic is still confusing, you can ask it to be explained as if you were a middle school student or even an elementary school student.
Again, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s useful for starting something. Similar to Wikipedia, it gets you in the right direction but it doesn’t do the work for you. You still need to research more about a topic that ChatGPT explained to you just like you still need to write the actual story that ChatGPT gave you an idea for. It’s a base point for most ideas, a place to get inspiration, not a source of direct information. Just like you wouldn’t cite Wikipedia, you shouldn’t cite ChatGPT.
This doesn’t take away from its obvious usefulness. I believe that it’s a powerful tool and possesses great potential for the future. While I personally don’t use it that much, it’s a good resource for giving a little bit of guidance and information whenever possible. I’m excited to see what else ChatGPT has in store.
By Lucy Ringel