chatgpt and beyond
Just one week after its release, ChatGPT had one million registered users. This resulted in a big stir in the media. Headlines threw around words like ‘peril’, ‘fear’, ‘controversy’ and ‘alarming’ in response to ChatGPT’s capabilities. Much of these words came in response to fears that AI will displace us. Krugman points out that ‘dislocation’ of workers by technology has been ‘a feature of modern societies for at least two centuries’. xi He warns that ‘some of us may find ourselves either unemployed or earning far less than we expected, given our expensive educations’, as a result of recent advances in AI.xii Others are more optimistic, Pattisall highlights that AI is not quite at its peak yet and that AI will always need supervision.xiii In this way, AI is a tool that can support human creativity, rather than hinder it. It is humans who need to work out how to involve AI in creative processes to use ChatGPT in an optimal manner. ChatGPT has also caused concerns in the education sector. On 5th January 2023, investor Marc Andreessen tweeted, ‘The war on children intensifies’, accompanied by a screenshot of a newspaper headline stating, ‘NYC education department blocks ChatGPT on school devices, networks’.xiv In response, Elon Musk tweeted, ‘It’s a new world. Goodbye homework!’xv The education sector has been thrown off balance by ChatGPT and its uncanny ability to construct arguments and make conclusions all in fairly natural sounding prose. It has been found that ChatGPT would be able to achieve a B grade on a Wharton MBA Exam.xvi Researchers have also discovered that ChatGPT was ‘comfortably within the passing range’ of the US medical licensing examination.xvii As such, ChatGPT presses us to reconsider the very meaning of education. Writing for the Financial Times, Camilla Cavendish notes that her own children ‘sit national exams which feel horribly similar’ to the ones she took at school and that their exams now come with the ‘new horror of mark schemes which must also be learnt to score points by parroting the correct key words’.xviii In light of this outdated system, Cavendish emphasises that we need to ensure we teach children how to use generative AI, rather than push them away from it. In her eyes, the legacy of ChatGPT is prompting a ‘wholesale rethink’ of our education system. She is indeed right. A rehaul of the curriculum has been needed since the invention of Google. If AI can take on the basics of any area of study, then perhaps students need not spend so long painfully memorising them, after all technology puts all the answers at our fingertips. Instead, children need to learn skills of critical thinking, analysis, and real-world application from an earlier age. Being able to use knowledge stored in online spaces is the only real skill that will be needed in the future, and curriculums need to begin adapting to that reality now. I asked Chatty about this issue, and he provided a similar response to my own opinion: Jieun:
How should education systems respond to the existence of ChatGPT?
Chatty:
Education systems should consider incorporating the use of language
models like ChatGPT to enhance language learning and improve writing skills. They
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