ChatGPT, A Transformational Tool?

ChatGPT, the chatbot, has made a lot of waves. Initially, people had fun. Then they were impressed. Next came the fears that it would be used by kids for writing school/college essays, and that it would do jobs that involved generating content in certain formats (like secretaries).

 

Then people started testing its limits. And found it could clear the US exam medical students take to become licensed doctors. It could even explain how it arrived its answers! While it’s nowhere near replacing doctors, could it serve as a support tool for doctors? It managed to get B/B+ grade in an MBA exam designed by a Wharton professor. Remember, these were descriptive answer tests, not multiple-choice questions, which makes it very impressive.

 

ChatGPT in the classroom seems to raise the most concerns. Will students cheat and use it to do the assignments? To do the homework? A game of cat and mouse was on. Some instructors started insisting their students come up with the basic skeleton of their answers to assignments in the classroom. At home, they could only build on and expand on that skeleton, not add altogether new points.

 

But of course, like any tool or technology, ChatGPT can be used for better learning too. As Thomas Rid describes. His institute conducted a 5-day course on the security aspects of computer science. Students were allowed to use ChatGPT through the course. His takeaway?

“It will transform higher education. Here’s why.”

 

First, he says, it helps filter the “mundane questions”, as one student put it.

“Meaning: you can ask the dumb questions to the AI, instead of in-class. Yes, there are dumb questions—or at least there are questions where the answer is completely obvious to anybody who knows even just a little.”

 

Second, if a term or reference doesn’t make sense (or you forgot what it was), “you no longer disrupt the flow of the class”, something many students said. How is that different from Googling during class, I thought? Aha, Googling throws up links, you click, scroll, and read… it takes far too long. By then, the class has moved ahead. Whereas ChatGPT can give you the exact answer quickly.

 

Third, more students found they could keep up and comprehend with help from ChatGPT, so fewer students dropped out. After all, it could explain jargon, terms explained earlier that you’d forgotten, things the lecturer assumed people would know, stuff that most people in the class knew (but you didn’t). If the instructor asked the class to use a software tool or feature, for example, one could take ChatGPT’s help to use it (if one didn’t know the tool already).

 

All in all, ChatGPT (and its successors) looks like a game-changing AI in multiple ways. And like any tech, it will enable both great things and bad things.

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