GPT is Here. What's a Teacher to Do?

Teachers and professors (I used to be one) are facing a new "threat" in that large language models like GPT-3, chatGPT, and others can easily complete most student writing assignments in a second and for pennies (or free, depending on which system they use). It should remind us of the advent of the Internet, which worried teachers that students could complete assignments by using information available from any computer with a simple copy/paste. Plagiarism checkers arose, enabling teachers to check assignments for wholesale lifting of text from sources, which of course drove students to try to modify copied text enough to skirt the checkers. Now checkers are becoming available that claim to be able to detect AI-generated text.

A colleague asked GPT to do his son's assignment (as an experiment--they weren't going to turn it in) and it did, but it failed a plagiarism checker. Then they asked the AI to redo the assignment in a way that does not plagiarize, and produced a version that passed the checker. But is an arms race between large language models and systems that can detect their usage the answer? Banning AI usage would be like trying to prohibit the use of Wikipedia in school work, or banning the asking of questions of anyone with a PhD in the field, or of posting questions online and collecting answers. The technology will always win. Fundamentally, we must train students to think, and to express their ideas, standing on the intellectual shoulders of those who have gone before. Perhaps thanks to AI, this kind of analysis and synthesis work was the exclusive domain of graduate students, but is now accessible to high schoolers.

Could we take the position that students have such powerful tools so they can do more advanced work, rather than so they can more easily avoid (more basic) work? To continue investigation along these lines, I put it to GPT-3, asking it to, "write a high school student history assignment that cannot be easily answered by use of GPT-3." It came up with some good ideas, which I list below, but more importantly it serves to inspire teachers and professors to challenge students to new levels of analytical and creative thought--the primary goal of education anyway. If, with the use of advanced AI tools, a high schooler can do college-level work, then the rising tide of capability can raise all of the student ships. In the same way that teachers might now avoid assigning plain long division problems, since online calculators can not only provide the answer, but also show all the intermediate steps, teachers must no longer assign simple "search and report" assignments. "Write a paper on elephants," is easily solved by a quick look at Wikipedia, while "compare and contrast elephants and tigers," is easily handled by GPT-3. But how about, "write an essay about the best methods for preserving wild species with arguments for species prioritization." When fed to GPT-3 as a prompt, the result is a fairly thin essay that mostly recirculates the terms in the prompt--I tend to think the result would not get a very good grade, since the assignment calls for more creative and analytical thinking--something large language models cannot do. After all, the large language model is limited by the writings of human beings at a point in time, so further human thought and creativity will always be possible. The new challenge for teachers is to create assignments that foster these abilities in students.

EXHIBIT 1

GPT-3's answer to, "write a high school student history assignment that cannot be easily answered by use of GPT-3"

1. Research and write a paper on the origins and impact of the "School to Prison Pipeline" in the United States.

2. Explore the different historical events and laws that led to the development and implementation of the "War on Drugs" in the United States and its subsequent effect on incarceration rates.

3. Using primary sources, analyze the effects of the Jim Crow Laws on African American communities in the United States throughout the 20th century.

4. Investigate the history and impact of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 on Native American communities in the United States.

5. Analyze how the desegregation of public schools in the United States has impacted educational outcomes for students of color.

6. Research the history of the labor movement in the United States and explore the impact of unions on working conditions for laborers.

7. Examine the history of civil rights movements in the United States and the impact they have had on civil rights legislation.

8. Investigate the history of the women's suffrage movement in the United States and analyze the impact of their efforts on women's rights and representation.