Freaking Out About GPT-3
by iSophist · 5 things on Twos
- OpenAI's ChatGPT interface is capable of producing convincing (though uninspired) college student quality writing to just about any prompt within seconds. Some are worried that this is the end of writing assignments, because if a bot can churn out passable prose in seconds that wouldn't trigger any plagiarism detector, why would students go through the trouble to do this work themselves? I think we should collectively see this technology as an opportunity to re-examine our practices.
- ChatGPT writes in fully fluent, error-free English with clear structure. The College Board gives students 40 minutes to write their response. ChatGPT churned out an essay on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper that I'm certain would be scored a 5 in about 12 seconds. What does this say about the kind of work we allow to stand in for student proficiency when it can be done by an algorithm that understands nothing about content?
- The worry about how students might use a tool like ChatGPT is rooted in an apparently pervasive belief that students would much rather cheat than do the work. We can give students learning experiences of intrinsic interest and extrinsic worth so they're not tempted into doing an end run.
- These approaches require sufficient time and resources for faculty to do the work that creates an atmosphere conducive to learning. That challenge isn't new, but perhaps now that we've seen what the GPT3 algorithm is truly capable of, we can do what we've long known is necessary.
- Freaking Out About ChatGPT—Part I. (n.d.). Insidehighered.Com. Retrieved December 15, 2022, from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/freaking-out-about-chatgpt%E2%80%94part-i