Here’s Why Schools Shouldn’t Ban ChatGPT
ChatGPT and other text generators have made their presence heard. Schools are panicking.
OpenAI, the same company behind DALL-E 2, one of the best AI text-to-image generators, launched ChatGPT in late November 2022. ChatGPT allows users to input prompts and detailedrate responses back.
You could ask it to write a YouTube video script, create a children’s story, answer a multiple-choice question, and (almost) anything else you might dream of.
Since ChatGPT’s initial launch a couple of months ago, the developers have dialed it back quite a lot. Back in November, it would generally give more creative responses, and there was virtually no limit to the questions it would answer.
However, the program has since boiled down to giving more generic and uncreative responses. It will also refuse to answer certain questions based on its moral knowledge.
For example, CGP Grey from the Cortex Podcast recalled asking ChatGPT to write a fictional children’s story about coffee beans near the launch date. It gave a pretty creative story in which there was a storyline with different coffee beans having their own character traits.
There were still some aspects of the story that were odd or not that exciting, but it was still more interesting than the answers it might give now, like the one below:
Once upon a time, in a small village in South America, there lived a group of coffee beans named Java, Mocha, and Espresso. They were the best of friends and loved to spend their days chatting and playing together.
One day, a farmer came to their village and picked Java, Mocha, and Espresso along with many other coffee beans. The three friends were terrified as they were placed into a burlap sack and taken far away from their home.
After a long journey, the farmer brought the coffee beans to a big city and sold them at a market. Java, Mocha, and Espresso were separated from each other and placed in different bags.
Days went by, and Java found himself in a dark, damp place. He felt lonely and missed his friends. But one day, a kind woman came and took him home. She ground him up and added him to hot water, turning him into a delicious cup of coffee.
Mocha, on the other hand, was taken to a fancy coffee shop. He was blended with chocolate and spices, turning into a rich and creamy treat. Espresso was used to make strong and flavorful shots of coffee, enjoyed by many people in the city.
Despite being apart, Java, Mocha, and Espresso were still close in spirit and thought of each other often. One day, they were all reunited at a coffee shop, and it was the happiest day of their lives. They spent the day sipping on their own special blends and chatting about their adventures.
From that day on, the three coffee beans continued to spread joy and happiness to everyone who drank their delicious blends. They lived happily ever after, knowing that they would always be together in spirit.
The end.
As you may see, this is a pretty lackluster story. But, for someone trying to write a children’s story, this could be an excellent starting point. They would obviously need to work on the storyline a little, but they could get a decent children’s story out of this in a fraction of the time it would take them to write it from scratch.
Naturally, students in both K-12 and university have been using ChatGPT to write essays and other text-based assignments instead of doing the work themselves. Schools and teachers have been scrambling to figure out how to deal with this.
Some public schools in cities like New York City and Seattle have already banned ChatGPT, but prohibiting students from using websites has become increasingly difficult. ChatGPT itself even provided some ways students could bypass website restrictions, including using VPNs and mobile data.
Anyhow, there is no justifiable reason to ban ChatGPT and other text generators in school. Students will still be using it outside of school, and it will still exist when they graduate.
Therefore, kids need to have at least some knowledge of AI before they graduate, as it will be a crucial part of the world.
It’s also important to recognize that schools and teachers can use AI to improve the education system. We’ve mostly incorporated technology like calculators and computers into education, so there’s no reason we can’t do the same for AI.
Positive Uses of Artificial Intelligence in Education
Automated Grading and Feedback
It’s easy for computers to grade multiple-choice tests online but not so easy to grade written tests. Once AI becomes advanced enough, programs similar to ChatGPT will be to grade questions with written responses accurately.
This would free up a ton of time for teachers and give them more time to help their students.
Virtual Tutors
If you want to get a good tutor today, you’ll likely either have to pay good money for an online tutor or be restricted to narrow time slots for local tutors.
Virtual, AI-powered tutors could solve these problems, or at least the second problem. (There’s no telling how much a virtual tutor may cost.) Students who require more assistance could benefit tremendously.
Teaching Critical Thinking Skills
As I said before, ChatGPT will often give mundane or generic responses. But it will also sometimes respond with false or inaccurate information while doing so very confidently.
Although this likely won’t be the case for very long, teachers today could use ChatGPT’s incorrect answers to questions as an opportunity to teach students critical thinking skills. The simple lesson here is that you shouldn’t believe everything you find online.
Idea Generator
Earlier, I gave an example of a children’s story about coffee beans written by ChatGPT. It wasn’t a great story, but it’s still a reasonable starting point for a children’s author to write a good book.
Students could use it similarly, whether to generate essay outlines or just a brief overview of the topic they are writing about.
There are several other possible positive use cases, but these are just a few.
Whether schools like it or not, AI-generated content is here to stay. We need to learn to work alongside it, not pointlessly try to ban it (which is impossible to do entirely without government legislation).
If school is about preparing students for the real world, then we shouldn’t be banning things that will inevitably be an integral part of their lives.
