It’s that time of the year again with the warm weather and golden sun rays hitting our skin being just over the horizon. However in order to get there we have to get through finals. Many students during this time rely on educational aids to help them deal with the stress of having five major finals in one week and with the development of new artificial intelligence iit may be possible to manage it all. The problem is, not all stress-inducing situations have an easy fix and not all easy fixes are worth the risk.
This semester the University of Maryland has been investigating students’ use of artificial intelligence on assignments. The university said in an email the use of programs like ChatGPT on assignments could result in consequences varying from an automatic failure of a class due to plagiarism, an “XF” or failure due to plagiarism, or expulsion from the university entirely.
Still, what is ChatGPT and can it be used responsibly?
According to computer science professor John Yiannis Aloimonos, who specializes in computer visualization, robotics and artificial intelligence, understanding the different artificial intelligences is the first step.
“There are two kinds of artificial intelligence. One kind is what you can call bio-inspired, it means it is…like the intelligence of animals and people,” Aloimonos said. “The second kind of… artificial intelligence is a very weird one, ChatGPT is an example of that…and what I mean by weird one is that these systems exhibit some kind of intelligence but it is very far from the intelligence we have.”
ChatGPT launched on Nov. 30, 2022, a follow-up to InstructGPT, as a program meant to answer questions posed by the user. Its author, OpenAI, describes the program as one that “interacts in a conversational way” and has the ability to “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests” on its website.
“It is a very large neuro network that has learned to predict the next word,” Aloimonos said. “That is how it generates answers by predicting and this prediction is based on all the text that it has seen on the internet.”
The modern internet is a public forum. Anything can be posted and most of its content is not fact-checked or regulated except by the entities who publish the information. We’ve seen this recently when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was brought before Congress testifying about the company’s policy and regulation of false information on Facebook. It’s complicated, but why does AI like ChatGPT pose a threat to college students?
“ChatGPT is a good thing as a system you can use…now ChatGPT is gonna do all this thinking that you are doing… so it will be faster for us to find information if we use ChatGPT well…problem is sometimes you will look up information and ChatGPT will make up information so you cannot really trust it 100%,” Aloimonos said.
Kayla Bladzinski, a sophomore criminal justice major at the university, uses ChatGPT to help her with classes and studying.
“I actually used ChatGPT and I was like, ‘Hey, can you explain how a bill becomes a law to me like I’m a first grader’, and it came up with this really good example of how you can explain it,” said Bladzinski.
The directive ask-and-answer format of ChatGPT allowed her to be descriptive about what she wanted instead of trying to search the internet to find something she could understand, according to Bladzinski.
“It’s almost similar to Google in my opinion, where you can just look certain things up and it can explain it to you I think in a more short fashion which I like personally, instead of having to scour the internet for a good definition that fits what I’m trying to learn,” she said. “I don’t 100% trust it. I think it could be a useful tool.”
Bladzinski said the use of ChatGPT has been monitored by her teachers who have taken the time to explain the proper way to use the program.
James Bond, Director of Student Conduct, explained how the university plans to deal with new artificial intelligence programs and new technology.
“I think students who are using it without guidance from an instructor on how to properly use it risk hurting themselves…And even if instructors don’t speak to its use, if ChatGPT is used, then instructors will want students to indicate that in the assignment,” Bond said.
According to Bond, any student caught using new artificial intelligence tech on an assignment will be heard by the Office of Student Conduct and from there an investigation into the incident.
“Just because something is flagged and referred to OSC doesn’t mean that a student is responsible for a violation,” Bond said. “Should there be an incident referred to OSC regarding ChatGPT, we will talk with the student and help them see if an error was made in their application of the tool.”
The Teaching and Learning Transformation Center hosted several discussions on ChatGPT and other programs with the Office of Student Conduct joining in to help educate instructors and students on the tool over the semester.
The information we gain from technology can’t always be trusted. However, new tech is continuously developing and has become a huge staple of our modern lives. Colleges and students are trying their best to apply these tools responsibly as it continues to emerge.