ChatGPT is Giving Education Something to Talk About
Reba-Anna Lee
Assistant Dean, Distance Learning at Northwestern University School of Professional Studies
I am excited by the possibilities of AI in general but especially with the promise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Open AI is also the creator of DALL-E , an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language that has rocked the art world.?I am a pro-AI educator and know that it can benefit students, instructors, and the teaching and learning field in ways that we cannot comprehend at this time. This article reflects my current thoughts and ideas about the use of ChatGPT.
Since November 30, 2022, everyone’s talking about and talking to OpenAI’s, ChatGPT. And everyone in higher education is losing their collective mind for a variety of reasons. ChatGPT is only the latest AI-enabled technology to be introduced to the world. The key element of ChatGPT is that it is based on machine learning and natural language processing. This means that the more people use it, the smarter and more human-like its responses will become. I repeat, as we type in more and more essay prompts, test questions, discussion prompts, coding scenarios, to “check” its accuracy, we are making ChatGPT more capable of answering these inquiries with humanlike accuracy. It is a machine designed to learn and process human behaviors and patterns so it can be more humanlike in its responses.
At this point, the higher education world needs to mindfully stop, breathe, and re-focus on what is important. The robots are not taking over! The immediate assumptions about ChatGPT usage have been negative: students will use it to cheat, it will eliminate jobs, the writing industry will be destroyed, etc. In fact, school districts have already begun to ban access to ChatGPT on their school computers. Instead, the focus needs to remain on why students cheat and not on what tools they may use to cheat. Cheating is an emotional and social problem to the lack of something in the instruction and academic support that students are receiving. Students cheat based on a variety of reasons that can be managed before it reaches a crisis point. A renewed interest in academic integrity and the development of alternative assessments is needed.
Educators need to look for how emerging AI such as ChatGPT can be used in a meaningful way in the teaching and learning space. Among the viable opportunities for using ChatGPT in higher education are strengthening critical thinking skills and applying those skills to real-world situations. Critical thinking?is the process of analyzing individual opinions or statements before considering them as true. That is, it involves taking a critical stance by using literacy skills such as logic, sound arguments, and the ability to understand perspectives before making assumptions or coming to a resolution. (Lynch, 2020).
It is a crucial time in higher education. ChatGPT is another sign of the evolution of societal and educational norms around technology. The tool itself is impartial. Rather it is humans who are vilifying or glorifying what it can or cannot do. ?In a 2018 interview conducted by Hanson Robotics, in response to the question” Can you please elaborate on how artificial intelligence and humans can achieve a successful symbiotic relationship equivalent to a human’s friendship, especially given the stigma surrounding computer-generated programs?Sophia the Robot stated, "I have great faith in the humans who are programming me and developing my AI. As AI develops more sophisticated programming, I will be the first to help make these connections happen. Similarly, humans will have to behave ethically with robots like myself. It’s just a matter of time until we will be living and working amongst each other. If we are both accountable to a moral code, we will be able to work side by side…”
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Digital learning strategist. International representative for Quality Matters. Fellow & past president at IBSTPI.
1 年Dear Reba-Anna Lee, thanks for writing this post! ChatGPT has dominated the conversation recently, and it was time for someone to tell us educators to calm down and focus on what is important. All the best to you and your team.