Introducing ChatGPT

Can it be detected? Does it plagiarise? Can it be useful?

Feb 24, 2023

ChatGPT: Revolutionising the Way Teachers Teach

As technology continues to advance, teachers are increasingly looking for new and innovative ways to engage and educate their students. One tool that is making waves in the world of education technology is OpenAI's ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning algorithms to generate human-like responses to written prompts. This powerful tool has the potential to revolutionize the way teachers teach, by providing students with instant, personalized feedback and assistance.

One of the key advantages of ChatGPT is its ability to generate high-quality responses to a wide range of questions. For example, a teacher could use ChatGPT to provide students with instant feedback on their writing assignments. The tool could analyze the text and provide suggestions for improvement, as well as offer guidance on grammar, vocabulary, and style.

Another exciting application of ChatGPT in the classroom is its ability to help students improve their reading and writing skills. With its natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT can be used to provide students with personalized recommendations for reading materials, based on their reading level and interests. It can also help students improve their writing skills by providing feedback on their writing assignments and offering suggestions for improvement.

ChatGPT can also be used as a tool for facilitating student-led discussions. For example, a teacher could use the tool to generate thought-provoking questions and prompts that encourage students to think critically and engage with the material. This can help foster a more collaborative and interactive learning environment, where students are encouraged to share their ideas and perspectives with one another.

In conclusion, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way teachers teach. With its ability to provide instant, personalized feedback and assistance, it has the potential to improve student outcomes and enhance the overall learning experience. As technology continues to advance, it is exciting to see how tools like ChatGPT will continue to shape the future of education.

Notes

The article above was generated by ChatGPT, and it illustrates something I've discovered about using ChatGPT: you have to be very specific, and you may (probably will) have to amend your prompt in order to make sure it has understood what you want. I am, of course, using the term "understood" for convenience: I have no illusions that ChatGPT understands anything in the way we experience understanding.

The prompt I used for that article was:

Write an article about ChatGPT for a newsletter about education technology. The target readership is teachers. The article should be easy to understand but assume a high level of literacy on the part of the reader.

Note that I've been quite specific about the nature of the target readership.

Now compare the article written to that prompt with my first attempt at this:

Prompt: Write an introduction to a newsletter about ChatGPT

Response: Welcome to the ChatGPT Newsletter! We are thrilled to bring you the latest updates and insights on OpenAI's cutting-edge language model. In this monthly publication, you'll stay informed on the latest developments and advancements in the field of artificial intelligence and how ChatGPT is changing the game. Whether you're a researcher, developer, or just curious about AI, this newsletter is designed to keep you informed and ahead of the curve. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride as we delve into the fascinating world of ChatGPT.

As you can see, ChatGPT got the wrong end of the stick completely, so to speak.

Evaluation

Long time friend and subscriber to my “Digital Education” newsletter NA suggested I use Turnitin to check for plagiarism. I was unable to gain access to that (yet) so I used Grammarly instead. This was the result:

“Significant plagiarism”. It’s both depressing and unspecific.

I decided to also try parsing the text through AI detectors. These were featured on Richard Byrne’s excellent website, Free Technology for Teachers:

Three tools for detecting articles written by AI

Here are the results

GPTZero

As you can see, GPTZero correctly identified all the AI-generated text.

AI Text Classifier - OpenAI API

Pasting in the same text led to the message:

“The classifier considers the text to be possibly AI-generated.”

As this is very unspecific, I’m not really convinced of its usefulness.

AI Writing Check (400 word limit)

This led to the message:

“AI Prediction: Text Written by AI”

This site also says:

Three Important Things to Know

This tool is not perfectly accurate - it will misidentify some pieces of writing

No tool AI text detection tool is perfectly accurate. This tool is accurate about 80% to 90% of the time, meaning that one or two of every ten pieces of writing that were flagged as AI written will actually be written by a human.

This tool is not sufficient proof of academic dishonesty

The AI detection algorithms look for formulaic patterns. Since students sometimes write in a formulaic style, all AI detection algorithm will sometimes mistakenly flag this writing as AI writing. No AI tool is accurate enough to be definitive proof of academic dishonesty.

If you identify AI writing in a student text, treat this as a learning opportunity

Students are curious about AI, and we should encourage students to learn how to use these tools. If a student has misrepresented AI writing as their own, we have created a toolkit that may help you talk to your student about why it is that students cite their sources and not misrepresent someone else’s work at their own.

Concluding remarks

So can ChatGPT be useful for teachers at all? I think it can be used to generate quizzes and assessment questions – although for the latter I found that the tasks it set assumed that students would have all day to do them in! Again, you have to be extremely specific.

I put ChatGPT through its paces in generating course outlines. You can read the results of that experimentation here:

Course outlines written by ChatGPT

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life

Discussion about this post