Recent news, especially news coming from higher education publications, publish almost daily on Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially the new open.ai tool ChatGPT. Whether the tool and its alternatives pass medical exams or legal bar exams (never perfectly), whether pessimists opine on the threat to the classroom and learning as we know it, or whether optimists dream about the opportunities these technologies offer, all appear to agree that the process of writing as a way to gauge learning will need to be reevaluated. As a reminder, ChatGPT allows you to type some keywords and questions into the application, and the application provides an answer in seconds.
ChatGPT, in its current iteration, is quite new. It came into the spotlight in November 2022. On February 1, Reuters reported that AI bot ChatGPT reached an estimated 100 million active monthly users last month, a mere two months from launch, making it the “fastest-growing consumer application in history,” according to a UBS investment bank research note. By comparison, TikTok took nine months to reach 100 million monthly users, and Instagram about 2.5 years, according to UBS researcher Lloyd Walmsley.
Even with this big splash, ChatGPT is not the first AI tool but has been preceded by other AI tools that many of us have been using in our daily lives. Whether we are using Google Maps to get a sense of traffic delays, Google Translate to get a quick sense of a menu or street sign in a language not familiar to us, or spelling and grammar suggestions to improve our writing, AI in simpler ways has been saving us time. This AI Usage Map gives a sense of the variety of areas where AI has been in use or will soon be in use (Joshua Wöhle on Twitter).
ChatGPT and some other tools like DALL-E-2 and Soundraw may feel different to us as we perceive an element of creativity and complexity that we expect in our work, in the work of our students. The threat of not knowing if work turned in by students is actually their own work, possibly even the threat of becoming expendable is worth exploring; add to this questions about copyright, intellectual property, and ethics in general, and it becomes clear why some people are hesitant to embrace these new tools. Note that a couple of tools like GPTZero and Open.AI’s own detection tool can help discern whether a text was created by a human or a machine. Or, as a couple of folks on social media suggested, AI can sound like mansplaining.
But what if, instead, we side with the optimists and use this new technology to make mundane tasks easier, to cross a barrier of writer’s block, to develop critical thinking and digital literacy skills? What if these tools help us learn to ask better questions?
These tools are so new and will evolve at such a rapid pace that we will not be able to avoid them in our lives. I am glad that Carleton is taking its first steps to think about the technology through the formation of the AI Community of Practice. In addition, our LTC published a recent blog post on Teaching with and around ChatGPT and other Tools. Join us to continue the conversation!
PS — to come up with a title for this piece, I asked ChatGPT a few questions. Here is the exchange:
Wiebke: I am writing a blog post about chatgpt and people’s different view points. What would be a clever title for this blog post?
ChatGPT: “The Debates Around ChatGPT: Different Perspectives on the Future of AI Conversations”
Wiebke: This is accurate but boring – can you make it more fun?
ChatGPT: “Chatting with ChatGPT: Navigating the AI Frontier and its Controversial Views”
Wiebke: Can you add some more alliteration?
ChatGPT: “Chatting with ChatGPT: Navigating the AI Arena and its Contentious Views”
You be the judge how successful the title is.