By Caroline O'Beirne, First Year, Politics and Spanish
For many students, ChatGPT has become an essential part of coping with their studies. A free model, with instant access to limitless sources on the internet; how did our forebearers study before? How could we not think that this is a dream come true?
Despite all the numerous benefits that AI has to offer not only students, but wider humanity, many experts have outlined the drawbacks of such advanced technology. At the heart of this lies the debate concerning the ethics of receiving AI help and assistance whilst writing your essays, and the issue of what a reliance on AI could mean for our cognitive abilities and our natural intuition—crucial qualities for academic pursuit.
Speaking from experience, ChatGPT can be an essential tool in helping students to efficiently tackle their workload. Whether that be creating a new guide to help draft an essay, asking the chatbot to create a list of practice questions for exams, or providing brief summaries of difficult topics.
However, one of the main issues for students when working with ChatGPT is the model’s accuracy. ChatGPT gathers its information from sources across the internet; including those which are not reliable.
As a student who studies languages, issues to do with accuracy can have a real impact on my fluency. For example, if I were to ask ChatGPT to translate a paragraph, it’s likely to have a lot of mistakes concerning the grammar and fluency of the text. Not only can this impede learning, but what could happen is that AI models replace translation work all together.
When using ChatGPT as a guide, it can also mean that issues to do with plagiarism can also be flagged up. It would be easy to convince yourself that markers might not distinguish AI from your style of writing; but this could run the risk of students facing a penalty for cheating.
As a result, Universities across the UK have developed rules of guidance to help students make the most of these tools without compromising the integrity of their essays. For example, in a guide provided by the University of Bristol, it reflects that whilst the University could aim to, ‘integrate [AI] fully or allow some limited use of it in students’ preparing for assessment’ the guide identifies four categories that label how AI can be used within a assessment.
Category one is when AI has been completely prohibited from the assessment i.e. during an in-person exam. Category two is labelled as ‘minimal’ and refers to when AI can be used in small doses, i.e. as a spell-check, in comparison to category three, which allows a little more use. Category four, on the other hand, is when AI is an ‘integral’ part of the assessment i.e. students are tasked with analysing the responses it produces.
One BBC article highlights several signs that AI checkers look for, to see if AI has been used. For example, if a response has just rewritten the question, and provides no real evidence, or the statements that are made have no credible detail or analysis.
With AI, there is also the danger that it could undermine our natural cognitive abilities to complete tasks and use our own original thinking. This is an issue that is especially apparent amongst students within the art and literary fields. If AI can easily replicate or produce artworks, pieces of literature or even music in only a few minutes, how could human artists possible compete with this?
Since the popularity of ChatGPT has grown, I have found my feed flooded with AI drawings and pieces of literature, and frankly I find it fascinating.
But on the other hand, as we have seen with the writer’s strikes in Hollywood, this has the real potential to wipe out the livelihoods, incomes and work of artists. Whether they be writers, singers or painters, authentic human experiences that many express and communicate through their artwork will be undermined.
Within our own student community at Bristol, there are many talented individuals that wish to take up a career within these fields, knowing just how competitive it can be (often for little pay). Not only that, but the city we live in boasts a plethora of diverse music and art—such as the Banksy artwork on Park Street. It would be a complete tragedy if the work and dedication of artists within our community found themselves outsources by AI models.
Therefore, it’s essential we approach the development of AI with caution. There needs to be greater regulation on these industries to ensure these models only aid, rather than undermine, human talent. AI has some real potential to help humanity, but that potential is offset by even greater risks.
Featured Image: Epigram / Ellen Jones
Has AI changed the way you approach your studies?
