Opinion: We should let (and even encourage) students to use ChatGPT.

Last November, the release of ChatGPT caused an uproar. Software engineers are questioning their job security and students are already exploiting the tool for their assignments. The AI chat-bot, available for anyone to use, can generate eloquent sentences of any topic of your choosing, complete a multiple choice exam, and even write usable code. The panic caused by the implications of students using ChatGPT has caused some prominent school districts to ban its use on their respective Wi-Fi networks for both students and educators. Professors, afraid of essays wholly written by the AI, have started implementing stricter rules such as writing first drafts in person and monitoring further editing. However, the banning of ChatGPT in education is ultimately useless in “protecting learning” and educators should instead use the tool to help aid the learning and growth of the new tech generation.?

A ban on ChatGPT is simply not feasible due to the accessibility of the tool. Students who want to cheat will cheat, and enforcing a ban would require AI detection to be at the forefront. The task of distinguishing human vs AI created work is not part of an educator’s job description and is perhaps even near-impossible to be done at the moment. (Even the tool released by ChatGPT’s creators has trouble.) Some educators create more complicated, even convoluted assignments in an attempt to derail any attempt of using ChatGPT. Unjustly punishing students by harder assignments deters them from learning and critically thinking in the first place, which is the entire point of education (right?).

Even now, ChatGPT is already being used as a tool for improving education itself. Teachers use it to generate thought-provoking questions regarding a particular work to assign to students or conduct research on potential lecture material efficiently. ChatGPT does not replace teachers, instead, it could save them time on tedious tasks such as writing a quiz so teachers can focus on supporting their students. “Even more impactful would be to use this technology to personalize assessment and maybe even the learning experience. Learning effectiveness could be enhanced by customizing the learning process at an individual level to better match a diversified student body.” states Ward Beyermann, professor of physics and astronomy at University of California, Riverside. We should not be afraid that students will not learn if they use ChatGPT and rather see ChatGPT as a tool to enhance education. As Ethan Mollick, associate professor at UPenn’s Wharton School, puts it, “we taught people how to do math in a world with calculators, now the challenge is for educators to teach students how the world has changed again, and how they can adapt to that.” Would you say we should ban Grammarly as it discourages students from learning proper grammar?

ChatGPT and other AI tools are only going to become more prominent in society. Morris Maduro, professor of biology at University of California, Riverside, states that “it will be impractical to try to ban or prevent the use of ChatGPT. AI tools are here to stay. They will improve and become increasingly important across disciplines.” If AI is sticking around (and it (they?) definitely will), then why not teach the next generation how to use it to their advantage rather than ban them from the tools that would be prominent in their future workplaces? “Around the world, the adoption of artificial intelligence and its impact on businesses and society stands at a turning point. The global AI adoption rate grew steadily and now is 35%, a four-point increase from the year before” an 2022 IBM study states. Allowing the future generations to access and use these AI tools in their education lets them become valuable assets in an AI-filled world.?

One of the biggest concerns regarding using ChatGPT in education is that it would discourage critical thinking. A high school teacher in the Bay Area has even claimed that ChatGPT will end high school English. Daniel Herman states that “the technology doesn’t go much beyond the surface, nor does it successfully integrate quotations from the original texts, but the ideas presented were on-target—more than enough to get any student rolling without much legwork.” This is presented as if it's a bad thing, like ChatGPT is doing half of the student’s work. It is true that ChatGPT would help students generate ideas that some teachers would rather have the students come up with on their own. But the reality is that even without using ChatGPT most students exploit the same generic ideas taught in every literature class and/or go to a site such as SparkNotes that already has motifs and theses written out for them. It’s important to understand that “the bot is more of a synthesizer than a critical thinker. It would do well on a compare-and-contrast essay, but is less able to create a unique thesis and to defend that thesis.” Any unique ideas would have to be generated by a student’s mind, not an AI trained on ideas that have already been thought of. Even in an objective field of study, strong logic and reasoning will still need to be learned by students as “ChatGPT struggles with arithmetic computations or complicated mathematical calculations, indicating that logic is not completely acquired by such models.” ChatGPT will not discourage critical thinking, rather it will provide the foundation for new, novel ideas to be made, with teachers guiding students to be able to do so.?

It is worth noting that ChatGPT is not always factually correct. In fact, it has been caught many times stating out-of-date information and even prejudiced views. Although some would argue that we should prevent exposure of such incorrect and harmful information to students, this is even more of a reason that ChatGPT should be used in schools: we must teach students to use ChatGPT, understand its flaws, and mitigate the dangers of naively accepting anything it says as true. The potentially erroneous information generated by ChatGPT allows students to critique and pick apart its results. By encouraging skepticism of ChatGPT, students would have the opportunity to think critically and build new ideas, regardless of the accuracy of the generated results.?

After all, AI will only get better and better, integrating within every corner of society. Might as well learn how to use it. ??