Getting ChatGPT to help write your term papers and essays will feel like a major relief to any overwhelmed student - until it spits out text that's simply wrong. — Photo: Markus Hibbeler/dpa
BERLIN: You just feed it a few pieces of information, and in seconds ChatGPT has done 90% of the work you had ahead of you.
Millions of students around the world are set to use AI text generators like ChatGPT for help on their written assignments in the coming years, and experts believe tools like these are ringing in a long-term change in the way we educate.
"ChatGPT is here to stay," says Professor Ute Schmid, a specialist in AI and psychology at the Otto-Friedrich University of Bamberg, Germany.
"The hype about the text robot at schools and universities will die down again, but in the long run, these kinds of AI tools will find their way into many areas."
For students, the biggest warning should be that ChatGPT's "facts" cannot be taken as such, and Schmid says students should question every piece of text they get from an AI.
ChatGPT has been known to deliver inaccurate information, so students should now – more than ever – be aware of the need to verify information they receive through different sources.
Schmid assumes that more and more AI tools will be developed to help educators get a sense of whether a piece of text is AI-generated or not. ChatGPT makers OpenAI are working on such a tool, although so far it has not been effective in tests.
In any case, universities will have to adapt their approach to education to focus more on individual competencies, for example through oral examination, while relying less on written assignments, Schmid believes.
What's more, she can also imagine educators make conscious use of text-writing AIs in the classroom.
For example, when comparing two characters in a play, the teacher could ask: Get ChatGPT to generate three variants of this character comparison; check what the relevant points are, evaluate them from your point of view and find reliable sources to show where such aspects have already been discussed.
This way, students can both engage in a text while learning about productive use of ChatGPT and being mindful of sources. – dpa
