Are We Ready? The AI Challenges to Higher Education.
Just after the launch of Open AI’s new technology ChatGPT, the number of monthly active users reached 100 million, sparking an industry boom. The new chatbot can also tell jokes and lies, and even draw pictures and write essays professionally. Such a function is bringing huge challenge to the education field, such as the way to identify papers generated by AI, how to integrate AI into teaching, and even how to train students to respond to the strong dominance of generative AI will be the challenges of higher education in the next few years.
Evolution of AI Technology
There are many language-agnostic chatbots on the market, such as Chai, Simsimi, Replika, or Online Chat Bot, etc., but ChatGPT not only answers simple questions, but also accurately writes a song, short article or even a text based on the question. reports. And the articles produced by its language model can be easily passed through anti-plagiarism software. The chatbot has been online for more than a month and more than one million netizens have used it to write short articles. While most users just use it as a gadget for entertainment, such as writing funny poems, there have also been some amazing results from AI generating articles or helping to improve the quality of emails.
To Get a JD degree in Law School by ChatGPT
According to a report by The University of Minnesota, ChatGPT was mixed into the exam papers that students taken by and passed the four subject exams of the law school, meaning it was already eligible for admission to the law school. It turns out that while the performance of the AI was not outstanding, it was even arguably at the bottom of the class, but the four subjects also received B-, B-, C-, and C-, with a final average of C+.
So, What Are the Challenges for Universities?
Plagiarism and To Lower Interest in Learning
“ChatGPT is high-tech plagiarism; it undermines education,” said Noam Chomsky, a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. And many opinions expressed concern about negative impacts on student with ChatGPT. Just as the University of Hong Kong expressly prohibits the use of AI tools such as ChatGPT in classrooms, homework and exams, violators are considered plagiarists owing to ChatGPT threatens students’ ability to reading and writing skills and critical thinking.
Source Correctness of AI
GPT is good at imitating human language and can make answers sound accurate. However, this does not necessarily mean that ChatGPT has an understanding of the real world. One explanation for the discrepancy between ChatGPT’s correct and incorrect results is that ChatGPT gives answers based on probabilities, similar to the Infinite Monkey Theorem. This theorem states that when a monkey randomly taps on a keyboard, if the monkey’s typing time is extended to infinity, there is a chance that the monkey will complete Shakespeare’s masterpiece. Thus, if the logic content is complex or highly customized, it will cause difficulties in usage.
On the other hand, what are the potentials?
Embrace The Next Technology Generation
When talking about online teaching 3 or 4 years ago, many people were unfamiliar with it. It is now known as a basic essential skill. Nearly every PC has several pieces of online meeting software installed. The same is true for the topic of AI-assisted testing, which has presented many different challenges and twists in just a few months. Ten years ago at the university, there are only a small number of students would hand in handwritten assignments; Now, assignments are totally submitted and corrected online; In the workplace, cloud collaboration has changed the way project management is done. The traditional paper-and-pencil filing mode may be said to have been eliminated or greatly simplified.
Promote Reform of Education System With AI
ChatGPT is a tool application, said Zhang Pingwen, president of Wuhan University in China. “Universities can use various methods to guide students so that they do not use ChatGPT to replace their own academic training, and do not touch the red line of academic norms, although these academic norms may be in the future. Continuous reform under the pressure of technology.”
With the development of digitalisation and intelligence, the education of the human qualities of students needs to be strengthened. The days of emphasizing with science and engineering education are over, humanities education in colleges and universities will be increasingly important in the future.
Perceive of AI as a “Research Tool”
Students should perveive AI as a “research tool” rather than a “ghostwriting software”. Supporters believe that AI sometimes gives wrong information, and such “unreliability” makes students more focused on in-depth verification of every detail, and even stimulates new ideas in the process. Integrating new technologies into the basic curriculum can effectively increase students’ willingness to learn.
Singapore, which announced at the outset that the government would bring ChatGPT into the public service system, appears to be ready for the application in education. Aim to popularise AI technologies such as ChatGPT and start to guide those involved in education on how to use them.
Conclusion
Recently, the advent of ChatGPT has led to a discussion on the impact of AI on the world. As an artificial intelligence model, ChatGPT can understand and converse with human natural language. Compared with the previous way of receiving human instructions through computer language (program), the emergence of ChatGPT is undoubtedly a major breakthrough. ChatGPT will undoubtedly have a huge impact on university education, which has prompted many schools to discuss how to deal with its emergence. For example, some universities recommend that teachers clearly explain the consequences of students using AI to generate papers in their syllabuses. Anti-plagiarism companies are also planning a new version to better identify AI-generated answers.
The core of university education is stimulating student creativity. In the era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming easier and easier to obtain information, and most of it can be obtained through artificial intelligence. However, the creation and application of knowledge still requires human creativity. Therefore, future university education should place more emphasis on nurturing students’ creativity so that they can engage in creative work to keep up with the AI era.
