AI Tools and Their Effect on Higher Education, Part 3

Contributed by Izaak Diefenbach, Instructional Designer I (COE)

This is the third article in my series on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in higher education. In the first article, I used an AI tool called GPT-3 to write the introduction to the article, then went on to discuss it and other similar AI tools and how their use could affect higher education. In this article, I am going to discuss one specific new tool, ChatGPT.

You may have already heard about ChatGPT. It has been all over the news since its introduction in late November. ChatGPT is a chatbot built on top of GPT-3’s language models. It has since been updated and improved with the release of GPT-3.5. I know this is a lot of technobabble, so what is it really? ChatGPT allows a user to ask questions and receive answers using natural language. Basically, this means that you can type in a question in regular, non-technical language and you will get back a response that reads like something a person would write, not a computer. It is designed to be used in areas such as customer service and technical support, where it is important to be able to provide quick and easy access to information. It can also be used in education for tutoring or research assistance, for example.

However, ChatGPT is capable of a lot more than those kinds of simple interactions. It can write poetry and song lyrics. It can write screenplays and other kinds of stories. It can even write music. It is really amazing to think about what it is capable of. But it can also be used to write essays and answer test questions, and this is why it is making the news.

One of the first questions many people ask is whether or not the answers are actually any good. The answer is yes and no. It frequently depends on what you are asking it to do. Sometimes the responses are very good; other times, they can be really bad. The important thing to note is that it is constantly being improved, and it is getting better at an astonishing rate. In education, the question most have is, “isn’t this cheating?” Maybe or maybe not. That depends on the instructor.

For now, the general reaction seems to be, yes, this is cheating. That is a natural response to new technology. It has always been like this. When I was in high school, that was the reaction from math teachers to scientific and graphing calculators. But the reality is that this technology is not going anywhere, and it will only get better, so we need to embrace it, understand it, and learn how to use it to enhance instruction.

If you are interested in trying out ChatGPT, you can find it here: https://chat.openai.com/. If you are interested in learning more about AI tools in higher education, we will be doing an online presentation during Faculty Development Week on February 6th at 11:00 AM. Be on the lookout for more details soon.