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.
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.’”
Many schools across the nation and locally are beginning to address AI and how it should be used.
Lynnfield High School senior Colin McCormick described ChatGPT as “a giant research project that becomes a giant library of information that you can pull from just by basically talking to it.
“But it’s a double-edged sword in that while its benefit is it helps us work more efficiently and create amazing things, I also think it can be used maliciously,” McCormick said. “I agree that if you hand something in that Chat wrote without original content that’s plagiarism, but if you are using Chat or other AI as a draft to organize your thoughts, then that’s really good.”
The self-described “technology-inclined” student said ChatGPT became popular at his high school about a month ago, but its use has since decreased as students perceive it as “gimmicky.”
McCormick is fascinated by the question of who owns the intellectual property rights to products produced by AI.
“It’s like something you create on a computer; the computer doesn’t ‘own’ it because it was incapable of making that product without your input. But even so, instead of saying ‘Don’t use it because it’s cheating,’ we should be saying ‘Here’s how you can use it to do more efficient work in your own personal endeavors,’” McCormick said.
Assistant Superintendent of Schools Kevin Cyr agrees with McCormick. He said he has looked into and “played around with” ChatGPT, and knows students are accessing it.
“AI isn’t going away and we don’t want to cater to plagiarism, but we are going to have to adapt to it,” Cyr said. “This is the world we live in now and I don’t think there is a high school teacher who isn’t addressing it, so we need to learn as we go.”
Cyr said the topic was discussed at a recent professional development session and that the district plans to place more emphasis on AI in the future.
“It gives you a framework to get started so for us, we see the benefits. So we are trying to educate both students and teachers on how to use it,” Cyr said. “One thing I can say is that the topic will be a big part of our professional development training next year.”
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.
Lynn Classical world history teacher Dan Twohig this year began requiring students to handwrite all their assignments to ensure that their work was not written by someone else or an AI software.
He said in the past, it’s been easy for him to catch students turning in work pulled from Wikipedia or other online sources, because the writing they turned in did not match their typical style or ability.
“With ChatGPT, it’s much more conversational, and it can look more like their own styles,” Twohig said.
Teachers, he said, should collaborate to find appropriate uses for the software in schools. Like Cyr, Twohig said that just like any other new technological advancement, ChatGPT has the potential to be a learning tool, as long as educators can find a way to properly use it.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to truly avoid it moving forward, so we’re just going to have to figure out how we can incorporate it in a constructive manner,” Twohig said.
Swampscott Public Schools (SPS) Technology, Libraries, and Innovation Director Lytania Mackey Knowles and Social-Emotional Learning Director Craig Harris said ChatGPT is now on teachers’ radars.
They said they are at the beginning of understanding how to use AI for the staff and students. The SPS technology, libraries, and innovation team is finding resources on AI to share with teachers, they wrote in a statement.
“In addition, we are designing summer professional development for our staff on how AI works, and how staff can use it to design even better educational tools for teaching and learning,” they added.
Charlie McKenna, Anthony Cammalleri, and Anne Marie Tobin contributed reporting to this article.
