Launched by OpenAI in November of 2022, ChatGPT-3 is a chatbot becoming increasingly popular within schools around the country. This software can answer any question imaginable, while also being able to write text based on the prompts you provide. In just a matter of seconds, ChatGPT is able to create extensive essays on any topic. These essays are well-written, plagiarism-free texts that students are using to cheat their way through school.
School districts around the country are attempting to find solutions to this problem. According to The Verge, school officials in New York City have started banning access to ChatGPT, but this doesn’t necessarily solve the issue. While you can block ChatGPT on school-administered devices and networks, students can still use their own devices to access the chatbot and use the software however they please.
Ayden Taylor, a junior at Bend Senior High School, explains that he has seen many of his classmates use ChatGPT to write essays and answer questions on assignments.
“I’ve played around with it (ChatGPT), and I would use it too, but I’m scared my teachers are going to find a way to catch the people that use it,” Taylor said when asked about his usage of ChatGPT.
Many are looking for ways to stop the misuse of the popular chatbot. BBC News Reports that Edward Tian, a 22-year-old computer science major at Princeton University, has been working on an app to detect if text has been written using the ChatGPT software. The creators of ChatGPT have also mentioned they’re looking for ways to detect misuse.
Detecting misuse may be easier than you might think. Jenny Brown, a Social Studies teacher at Caldera High School has a solution.
“We teachers still know when written work doesn’t sound like it came from one of our students… ChatGPT doesn’t have the typical style, sentence structure and grammar errors that we see in our students’ typical written work,” Brown said.
Less than a week after ChatGPT-3’s release, it had already amassed over one million users. ChatGPT is an interesting look into the future of AI and a preview to the services ChatGPT-4 will provide, which, while still unconfirmed, are anticipated to release sometime in 2023.