What do we do about CheatGPT?

In his first interaction with the media after becoming The Pope, Leo XIV, brought up the matter of AI, highlighting its immense potential, and warning of the grave dangers of its irresponsible use.

The Pope’s views are shared by researchers and tech activists around the world who have been documenting a growing number of negative consequences from the sudden ubiquity of AI chatbots.

One of these concerns seems to be that of cheating in school assignments.

Homework is dead

Cheating has been around long before AI or the internet. 

It used to be simply asking your sibling to do it for you. Or sometimes bribing your nerdy classmate with chocolates to write it for you. Now, ChatGPT can do it for you in seconds for nearly free, and ask for nothing in return (besides your data, of course). ChatGPT (and other chatbots like it) has revolutionised cheating to the point that homework is now irrelevant.

And it goes further.

LLM-powered chatbots have been having a significant impact on education, making traditional academic methods of pedagogy, examination and assessment obsolete.

A recent piece by New York Mag highlights rampant use of ChatGPT by college students in the US—and the students are not shying away from admitting it either.

Last month, OpenAI announced that college students in the US or Canada can claim ChatGPT Plus for free during the finals.

Read: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

Detection of AI-generated text is difficult and tricky. Certain words could give indications of the use of AI, but it is tough to establish such cases. Even AI detection tools are quite unreliable, and can give false positives.

Some teachers who spoke to New York Mag highlighted their fears of students becoming illiterate and losing critical thinking, creativity and effort. A few others expressed disillusionment, questioning the value of teaching writing or traditional assignments.

Soon after, the New York Times published a story where they found that teachers too are using ChatGPT to create course material and assignments. 

The professors told New York Times that these chatbots soften the heavy workloads, automates grading, and creates assignments. The students who spoke to them weren’t too happy—why should they pay so much to be taught by humans, if they can get it directly from an algorithm for nearly free. Fair point (especially when you realise how expensive tuition fees are in the US).

Read: College Professors Are Using ChatGPT. Some Students Aren’t Happy. - The New York Times 

So in essence, ChatGPT is creating assignments, and ChatGPT is writing the responses. So, what are the students and teachers doing with the time saved? 

I agree with The Pope here. AI has huge potential to make our lives better - it can improve not just our education system, but also our environmental policies, governance, and the efficiency of our legal system. But so far, the positive use of AI has been overshadowed by meaningless Ghibli filters, and dangerous AI companions.

I guess we should just admit that we need to reset our academic system (some would argue it needed a reset even before AI emerged), and think of more relevant methods to train them for a world with AI chatbots.

Have you been a victim of AI?

Have you been scammed by AI-generated videos or audio clips? Did you spot AI-generated nudes of yourself on the internet?

Decode is trying to document cases of abuse of AI, and would like to hear from you. If you are willing to share your experience, do reach out to us at [email protected]. Your privacy is important to us, and we shall preserve your anonymity.

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Deepfake Watch is an initiative by Decode, dedicated to keeping you abreast of the latest developments in AI and its potential for misuse. Our goal is to foster an informed community capable of challenging digital deceptions and advocating for a transparent digital environment.

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