Teaching undergraduates this spring for the first time in a couple of years, I was worried about chatGPT. But I quickly discovered that chatbot essays are (1) very bad and (2) instantly obvious - they might as well come with a watermark saying "produced by chatgpt." It's just not a problem at all.
As an experiment, I have occasionally used ChatGPT and Gemini to answer my kids' homework questions. Both have a 100% failure rate. Every single time I do it, the machine confidently spits out an answer that looks credible but is quite obviously wrong if you know the subject.
It's actually much better than old-fashioned plagiarism, because it's much easier to spot, and because you don't have to accuse them of anything. You just say, this gets a low grade because it doesn't do any of the things that I asked you to do.
The only actual problem is all the administrators (and a fair number of teachers) saying, oh we have to change everything we do in the classroom because of AI. No, you really don't.
Since it often comes up in the same context, should add that imo Wikipedia is great. One of the last survivors of the world of decommodified information-sharing that we thought the internet would create. Nothing in common with LLMs at all.
I think it would be ideal if the students all handed in essays written by ChatGPT, the professors graded them using ChatGPT, the grades were then handed in to the administrators, and students and teachers spent the time actually teaching/learning something rather than handling rote essays
It’s actually a potential opportunity too, though. Impetus for process change is rare, and honestly, lots of areas in various human systems where change is needed. Think some possibilities around an ole luddite lean-in move.
I would suggest it might come to better conclusions on things like campus protests than many college presidents, which yes, low bar, that’s what I’m saying. But is there anything that can be done with that?
Feels like the same people who misread the problem with Wikipedia aren't getting this right either.
* The problem with Wikipedia is reading a paragraph and thinking you know the topic, NOT that Wikipedia has bad info as so often warned about.
The difference, imo, is that Wikipedia is great. One of last survivors of the decommodified internet. Whereas chatgpt is just another dumb for-profit hyped up nothing.
