It’s true, in fact two of my teachers told me I could. And because they essentially speak on behalf of all teachers, using ChatGPT is fine right? Well, kind of, I guess? I think that the conversation surrounding ChatGPT is an interesting one, but often lacks nuance from both sides. One group of people will say that it’s the Devil, and a sign of the fall of critical analysis and creativity as we know it. Another group will say that it’s the best thing since sliced bread and we should use it for everything. Who’s right? Short answer - neither.
ChatGPT is such a revolutionary platform, because AI has never been this accessible. Of course we’ve always had our trusted friends Siri and Alexa, but there’s only so many times I can ask Siri what the weather is like and have him try to call my mum. Siri and Alexa are much more limited in their capabilities than ChatGPT, and other such AIs of similar intelligence are often blocked by paywalls or high subscription prices. Though ChatGPT has recently introduced a premium setting, as of now, it’s completely free to use their basic features. But I think it’s important to note that AI is nothing new, we’ve had many new developments over the last few decades, in fact, most of your favourite websites run off of AI. Netflix and Spotify use AI to personalise recommendations, Amazon uses it for image recognition, chess.com uses it for machine learning. AI is much more integrated into our daily lives than people care to admit, so why is ChatGPT so special?
Firstly, how does ChatGPT work? I’m not a comp-sci student so forgive my layman’s terms. One - it’s like a really smart version of google. Chat GPT is trained on a massive database of text data, which allows it to identify structural patterns in natural language, then develop and understand how that language works. Then, they move into the ‘fine-tuning’ phase, ChatGPT can be fine-tuned on specific tasks like text classification, question-answering, or conversational agents. Once this happens, it can be used to generate natural language responses to user inputs. To generate a response, ChatGPT takes in the user input as a sequence of tokens and predicts the most likely sequence of tokens that should follow, based on its understanding of natural language and the context of the conversation. That’s the part that’s incredibly advanced, and what makes it so different from existing forms of AI. As the user interacts with ChatGPT, the model refines its predictions based on the conversation so far. This allows it to generate more accurate and natural language responses over time.
So, why are people so scared? I think there are a few main reasons, one being the increased risk of plagiarism. I’m sure we all remember the PSE week dedicated to academic dishonesty, and we can all generally agree that, for lack of a better phrase, cheating is kind of bad. We really shouldn’t cheat because, ‘you’re only cheating yourself’. But in all seriousness, academic honesty is something that needs to be upheld, because it is the very foundation of our intellectual integrity. I know I sound like a teacher, but I genuinely believe this to be true.
I think that the main worry is that people are scared that because of ChatGPT’s machine learning algorithms, the likelihood of people using it to write things like personal statements, common app essays, IAs and EEs increases drastically - which is indeed a fair point. There is a very high likelihood that this will occur, and more and more teachers will end up with assignments that may as well just say ‘OpenAI ChatBot’ in the name space. There is no denying the fact that someone will try to do this, and if you’re considering doing this, I strongly suggest you don’t. Why? Because ChatGPT does not really write well. I don’t know if you’ve ever read an essay produced by the open AI chat bot, but it is the most vague and incomprehensible thing I’ve ever read. It’s as if I approached a grade six student and asked them to write a TOK exhibition IA. Yep, that level of writing. Sometimes, it’s just a bunch of words strung together that technically make sense, but really don’t communicate much. So in this case, yes, by using ChatGPT to write entire essays, you really are shooting yourself in the foot. But on the other hand, I think it is a fair point to say that ChatGPT does have good uses. As one of my teachers put it, it’s a really great way to synthesise information, “like a really smart google”. It pulls information from all corners of the internet, synthesises it, and presents it to you on a silver platter. So yes, it does have its time and place to use it.
I think one final thing that’s worth mentioning is that ChatGPT is incredibly susceptible to bias. It forms data and synthesis based on biased input, and therefore its output is also biased. It’s worth noticing these things, and thinking critically enough to question whether the information being provided is true or not. Because even ChatGPT themselves admit that sometimes their information will be wrong, outdated or biased.
In summary, use it responsibly (and for this, it is important to read the terms and conditions). Please don’t use it to write an essay, then cry when you get a 4.
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