Imagine you are in high school and get assigned to write a paper about World War II. Usually, you would do research through scholarly books and papers, and compile what you learned in a finished piece with citations. It would take you hours, if not days, to complete the assignment.
But now, thanks to the invention of an artificial intelligence software called ChatGPT, you could have the paper written for you in a matter of minutes. And you wouldn’t have to do a single second of research.
This is what schools across the nation are beginning to address, including those in Lynn, Lynnfield, Peabody, Saugus, and Swampscott.
But what even is ChatGPT?
Launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, a startup in San Francisco, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence system that can produce text based on prompts entered by users. It quickly made its way into schools.
According to an Associated Press article in January, the education department in New York City is “restricting access on school networks and devices because it’s worried about negative impacts on student learning, as well as ‘concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.’”
In Peabody, School Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunne said she was just reading an article about AI and the fears about its use in schools.
“We’ve always had programs that detect old-fashioned plagiarism, but this sounds like technological plagiarism,” Dunne said. “To me that’s what it is; it’s passing something off as your own creation when it isn’t. It has to be frustrating for educators to try to teach kids how to research and write papers when all (the students) have to do is push a button or click on a key.”
Dunne compared students using apps like ChatGPT for assignments to buying essays.
“It’s all over Facebook, these ads to do your college entrance essays or other papers,” she said. “Again, we know that is happening and it’s just the same thing — it’s just not the student’s original work.”
Dunne said she does not see the problem going away.
“Sure, companies will come up with tech-detection programs, but unfortunately, as soon as someone invents the detection programs, someone else will just invent a new way to get around them,” she said.
Anne Marie Tobin contributed reporting to this article.
