Associated Incidents
New software powered by artificial intelligence is the latest technology shaking up school campuses.
In November, a San Francisco-based research laboratory called OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which has the unique ability to generate human-like text on command.
From drafting fictional stories to churning out essays, ChatGPT cranks out responses to questions, making homework and assignments a breeze.
A high school sophomore in Calabasas, Jesse Brasler, showed just how easy it is to use the software. He asked the chatbot to write a group paper on the play “Macbeth.”
“Yeah, there you go, a thousand-word essay,” he said. “It’s really incredible.”
The Las Virgenes Unified School District allows students to use ChatGPT as a brainstorming tool for research, writing and communication.
Superintendent Dan Stepenosky, however, stressed that they don’t condone cheating.
“Our mindset really is, is this something that can be a resource and work with our students on, work with our staff on, rather than trying to batten down the hatches and keep it out,” he said.
Still, some educators in other districts are alarmed about students taking unethical shortcuts. Some educators, like a South Carolina college professor, have found students using the software to cheat.
“I came across what turned out to be written by ChatGPT, an essay in my upper-level philosophy class,” Darren Hick, an assistant professor at Furman University, said.
Hick said he spotted red flags in the writing and ran the student’s essay through the newly created detection program GPTZero and confirmed that artificial intelligence had done all the work.
“There is potential for misuse, and we needed to build the safeguards,” Edward Tian, a student at Princeton University said.
Tian is the digital gatekeeper who developed the GPTZero system to outsmart artificial intelligence.
“Everyone wants to know the truth,” Tian explained when asked why teachers across the country love his detection program. “No one wants to be deceived by a text that is machine-generated when someone said it’s human-generated.”
In mid-December, days after ChatGPT’s release, the Los Angeles Unified School District blocked the chatbot on all its networks and devices, saying they want “to protect academic honesty, while a risk/benefit assessment is conducted.”
As for OpenAI, they said it’s a product that should not be “used for misleading purposes” and that they are developing ways to “identify text generated by that system.”
Other teachers say that banning AI, like ChatGPT, in schools is not the solution.
“With AI, we have to embrace the technology, not block it,” Calabasas High School teacher Rich Lopez told KTLA. “I mean, teachers want to be teachers, not cops.”