Is ChatGPT unethical to use in school?

Is student use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Notion AI, at University level, wrong? Or, should how tertiary education is being offered be overhauled?

"But it's cheating," you say.

Well, cheating has been with us from the dawn of the quiz. And it has evolved from stealthily carrying your notes to the exam room, to copying another students notes, to accessing a leaked exam, to paying a student to do your thesis! And, yes, it's all wrong and unethical and ChatGPT has simply digitized the cheating process, you can say.

But. Is that a surprise?

This feels like an appropriate time to quote Bill Gates who said: “The first rule of any technology used in a business (or school) is that?automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” (brackets mine).

The purpose of education

If the purpose of education was/is to empower through sharing knowledge and then testing the learner to, hopefully, refreeze learning, should that premise have been questioned with the advent of the ubiquitous Internet with its infinite tentacles? I mean, suddenly, there was information parity. The student and teacher had access to the same information. Was this disruption not an opportunity to have gone back to first principles; to question the validity of the premise? (I think so) But did Universities do so?

The Internet disrupted everything, but did how education is offered change? Some renowned universities started offering lessons free over the internet and charging a fee for the certificate, if so needed. And, oh yes, plagiarism became, initially, vehemently penalized complete with software designed to detect it, in a student's work. That didn't last long. In many universities today, plagiarism is acceptable. So long as it meets a pre-determined acceptable threshold of course work done, say, 10%. But how education is delivered has stayed constant.

Now there's software that can detect responses lifted from ChatGPT. And soon, I'm sure, Notion AI and such other AI emerging technologies. Will universities, realizing they can't keep up, follow the same script and give an acceptable threshold too? Oh, I forgot to mention. Before the internet, it was taboo to walk into class (let alone an exam room) with a calculator. Today, it's common place, and even encouraged. But has delivery of education changed?

Is student use of AI tools like ChatGPT and Notion AI, at University level (or even lower ones for that matter), wrong? Or, should how education is being offered be overhauled?

What do you think?

You may also like to read: Does the education system make the A grade?