The top student in every class: ChatGPT!

Nicolaas Snijman

ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, capable of generating human-like responses to natural language prompts. It has garnered significant attention recently due to its ability to perform a variety of language tasks. These involve: answering questions, translating languages, and even creating coherent paragraphs and essays. ChatGPT’s impressive capabilities have made it a hot topic in both the natural language processing and artificial intelligence fields, leading to numerous exciting applications and research opportunities.

ChatGPT is so impressive that it can even write an introduction about itself! But an introduction is not needed with how popular ChatGPT has become; almost everybody knows what it is. This AI chatbot has been the talk of the town in almost every school. Some students can’t wait to use it to write their essays – as one student put it: “ChatGPT is the MVP of the year”. On the other hand, some teachers are dreading needing to deal with this artificial intelligence and their students’ human unintelligence.

Now, why is this chatbot – released by OpenAI in November of 2022 – so important in the educational world? Because of its duality. It can be both students’ most powerful learning tool and a det- riment to the learning process. If a student does not understand something they can easily ask ChatGPT to explain it and get a thorough and clear explanation. The bot can also understand and respond in other languages such as Afrikaans and isiXhosa. It can even explain coding languages. The big problem emerges when this chatbot is misused. Instead of asking the AI how something works, a student can simply ask for the answer and get it without having learnt anything themselves. This promotes laziness and deters students from learning anything. The mindset then becomes “I have an essay, let’s see what ChatGPT will write for me”.

Many academic institutions all over the world are trying to find countermeasures for this AI, and some have already found solutions with varying successes. Of course, ChatGPT isn’t the first AI chatbot and it certainly won’t be the last. Even art schools have to worry about AI-generated artworks.

AI will be a part of our future, whether we like it or not, so how we use it matters. That is why using AI chatbots shouldn’t be discouraged in schools, rather, it should be encouraged. Of course, students should not just use it to get the answers for whatever they need without any thought of their own. However, this is a tool that can research and answer just about anything in a detailed manner.

ChatGPT is the ultimate tool for learning if it is used properly. If the right approach is used AI chatbots could become the equivalent of an after school teacher. Students should be encouraged to use it responsibly. They should use AI to learn what they do not yet understand. It should be used to enhance the learning process, not eliminate it.