PETALING JAYA: Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT can be effectively used to increase knowledge among undergraduates, says Sunway University professor of economics Dr Yeah Kim Leng.
Although ChatGPT can be used by students to plagiarise, he said academics must look at how it can benefit academia in the long run.
“It can be used to turn students into creative, innovative and critical thinking individuals given all the information that is available through it,’’ said Yeah.
“Software such as ChatGPT will become more pervasive with time as more companies jump in to create AI-powered tools.”
However, he said educators must emphasise that plagiarism is a serious offence in academia and they can be expelled if they are caught plagiarising.
He said students must also be taught to attribute citations and quotations properly.
“When taking excerpts from other people’s work, they must interpret and explain it in their own words,’’ said Yeah.
Educationist and former Universiti Malaya professor Tan Sri Dr T. Marimuthu said the Education and Higher Education Ministries must keep up with the times.
“The relevant ministries will have to make a policy decision over ChatGPT’s use in academia. Students should be able to use ChatGPT as a reference but not in its entirety for their papers or essays, as this would amount to cheating and fraud,” said Marimuthu.
He added that safeguards must be introduced so that lecturers would be able to detect if undergraduates or post-graduate students used the AI tool for their dissertations or project papers.
“In my experiences with my own post-graduates, I personally know their style of writing and creative skills. It would be easy to detect if the ChatGPT was used if they submitted essays or papers with perfect language and content.
“The problem is when there are a large number of students, making it harder to detect plagiarism,” he said.
He added there is a danger that over-reliance on the AI tool will result in students losing their ability to develop their creative thinking skills.
“A student relying on ChatGPT may get good marks and graduate but will lack the necessary skills when hired by a company,” he said.
However, Monash University adjunct lecturer Dr Mahaletchumy Arujunan says plagiarism is not a new issue – with or without ChatGPT.
“Software such as Turnitin is used to detect plagiarism. As AI advances, there will be others (AI-powered tools) to outdo ChatGPT,’’ she added.
“There is a need for academic institutions to adapt more sophisticated software to detect plagiarism.
“Having said that, there are also conventional ways to cheat. I was approached by a student who is studying at a foreign university to write her assignment,” said Mahaletchumy.
“There are agents offering thesis and assignment writing services, and there are also websites advertising such services.”
Technology such as ChatGPT will also make it easier for these “providers” to peddle their services, according to her, as just about anyone can write “academic” papers.
“At the end of the day, it must all come down to ethics and integrity and students developing a sense of pride in hard work,’’ said Mahaletchumy.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia retired academic Prof Dr Maketab Mohamed best sums up the situation by saying that when students copy and paste instead of putting in hard work, their brains are not used as only their hands are needed to control the mouse.
“To write, you need to think first, but copying and pasting can bypass the brain,’’ he said.
