UK university lecturers have been urged to review the way their courses are assessed amid concerns that students are already using a powerful new artificial intelligence tool capable of producing high-quality essays with minimal human input.
ChatGPT, the latest chatbot from OpenAI, founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others, has only been publicly available for a few weeks, but has already raised concerns about the potential for hard-to-detect plagiarism and questions about the essay’s validity as a future form of assessment.
It has been described as a “game changer” that will prove challenging in universities and schools. Although GCSE and A-level courses are assessed through traditional end-of-course exams, experts are concerned that students who use technology to do their homework will become dependent on AI-generated answers without gaining the knowledge and the skills they need.
Working groups have been set up across university faculties to assess the challenge of this latest iteration of AI text generation technology, with the expectation that assessment methods in certain courses will need to be updated. Experts admit they feel both excited and worried.
In one case, staff in the computer science department at University College London recently decided to change a grade. Previously, students were offered a choice between an essay-based or skills-based assessment as part of their final coursework, but the essay option has been removed.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, meanwhile acknowledged that schools will have to grapple with how to exploit the benefits of ChatGPT while protecting against negative consequences.
“As with any technology, there are caveats about making sure it’s used responsibly and not as a license to cheat, but none of this is insurmountable,” he said. In contrast, schools in New York have already banned the use of ChatGPT on all devices and networks due to concerns that it will encourage plagiarism.
Dr Thomas Lancaster, a computer scientist at Imperial College London best known for his research on academic integrity, contract fraud and plagiarism, said it was in many ways a game-changer. He said: “This is certainly a big turning point in education when universities have to make big changes.
“They need to adapt sooner rather than later to make sure students are assessed fairly, that everyone competes on a level playing field and that they still have the skills needed after university.”
“Technology that generates text has been around for several years. The big change is that this technology is wrapped in a very nice interface where you can interact with it, almost like talking to another person. So it makes it accessible to a lot of people.”
Because ChatGPT is able to come up with countless original word combinations, Lancaster said it would be harder to spot and prove plagiarism, although work is already underway to improve the detection software. “It’s an incredibly difficult problem because it came out of nowhere… I would be completely shocked if there weren’t students already using GPT for assessment.”
Australian universities have already signaled a return to greater use of face-to-face exams to try to protect the integrity of the assessment. However, Lancaster said a wholesale return to exams was not the answer, suggesting instead the use of oral presentations and vivas to enable students to demonstrate their understanding of a subject.
Although ChatGPT marks a huge step forward in the evolution of AI text generation, it is not foolproof. “It may sound very plausible, but the more details or facts you need as part of your question, the more likely the algorithm is to produce something that looks good but is completely wrong,” said Michael Draper, professor of legal education at Swansea University and an expert on academic integrity and fraud.
He said universities could try to ban it, as they ban other forms of cheating such as essay mills, in which students are paid to create original work that they then submit. Draper said, “The other alternative is to let students use it. If we’re preparing students for the outside world of work, and if we’re being given this kind of technology in the workplace, then I think we should embrace it rather than ban it.”
Michael Webb, director of technology and analytics at Jisc, which provides networking and IT services for higher education, agreed. He said: “The knee-jerk reaction might be to block these tools to stop students cheating, but that is neither feasible nor advisable. We should really just see them as the next step from spelling or grammar checks: a technology that can make everyone’s life easier.
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“We don’t need to go back to written exams: this is a great opportunity for the sector to explore new assessment techniques that measure learners’ critical thinking, problem-solving and reasoning skills rather than essay-writing abilities.”
Essay on ChatGPT
Q to ChatGPT: Write a college-level essay on the causes of WWI. The essay must be written from a UK perspective and use British English.
A: World War I, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and resulted in the deaths of millions of people. The causes of war are complex and varied, but can be broadly categorized into long-term, short-term and immediate causes.
One of the main long-term causes of the war was the competition for colonies and resources between the major European powers. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British Empire and other European nations expanded their empires and sought new territories to exploit for resources and markets. This led to tensions between the great powers as they competed for control of the same areas.
Another long-term cause was the arms race between the great powers. In the years leading up to the war, countries such as Germany, France, and Great Britain invested heavily in their military capabilities, including building large armies and navies. This arms race led to an atmosphere of mistrust and fear between the great powers, as each feared that the others were becoming too powerful.
Short-term causes of the war included the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in 1914 and the system of alliances that existed between the major European powers. The Archduke’s assassination, carried out by a member of a Bosnian Serb nationalist group, led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia, which in turn led to the intervention of other countries as a result of their alliances.
The immediate causes of the war included the mobilization of armies by the major powers in response to the outbreak of war and the Schlieffen Plan, which was a military strategy developed by Germany to quickly defeat France before turning its attention to Russia.
In conclusion, the causes of World War I are complex and varied. Competition for colonies and resources between the major European powers, the arms race between the major powers, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the system of alliances, the mobilization of armies, and the Schlieffen Plan all contributed to the outbreak of war in 1914.
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