By: Staff Writer
May 26, 2023
The introduction of ChatGPT has created controversy about the ethics surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it should be used and how much power it should be given over our lives. One scholar believes that while ChatGPT has its good points there are some bad points and areas for misuse that cannot be ignored anymore.
Dr Helen Crompton, professor of Instructional Technology at Old Dominion University and executive director of the Research Institute for digital Innovation in Learning (RIDIL), said on a webinar, “Chat GPT: Considerations for education in Latin America and the Caribbean,” hosted by UNESCO that while ChatGPT has its benefits with regard to mining data from the internet and being a storage mechanism ready to disseminate information for the end user, its misuse should be stated clearly as well.
She added that “harmful uses” such as “cheating, plagiarism, inaccuracies and bias” are part and parcel of ChatGPT. For cheating, students can ask it questions and it will provide the answers.
What makes cheating through AI and ChatGPT so dangerous is that students can ask ChatGPT to write a term paper and the plagiarism check may not pick up that it was an AI bot that wrote the paper when all a student has to do is put in a few spelling errors and rearrange some of the grammar to make it appear authentically written by a human being. Dr Crompton said: “So we need to be aware of that and not just rely on programmes that can actually counteract this that we can ignore ChatGPT, because it certainly cannot be ignored at the moment.”
She continued, “Next one is plagiarism, its pulling information from the web, getting things from different places. It’s not always an exact words, but it is bringing things and we don’t always know where it’s from.
“The latest version of ChatGPT on Bing does tell you somewhere where some things are from. So that is helpful, but it cannot be ignored that it will be pulling things and we don’t know exactly where it’s coming from.”
ChatGPT can also get things wrong and give wrong information and calculations from time to time. For example, it may give a calculation on the world record for crossing the English channel on foot, when the English Channel is a large body of water and not understanding that it may give a time and a calculation on what it may take without taking into consideration that the English Channel is a body of water not on land. These are the types of inaccuracies that happen from time to time with ChatGPT.
With regard to “bias” and because ChatGPT gets its information from the internet when the internet has a huge amount of bias and this will be baked into ChatGPTs analysis.
The various data aggregators on the internet tried to clean up their own data by having humans to clear away some of the slant and bias for one side, but this too turned into a challenge when the human beings came in with their own bias and created another level of bias.
While the negatives are clear, there are some positives for ChatGPT Dr Crompton outlined. Primarily, ChatGPT can be used for content creation where it can tailor make content to suit particular demographics and audiences.
Another positive with ChatGPT is that it can provide tutoring for students at any point and time in the day, improving the quality of learning for distance learners or for people that need additional support.
Equally as important, ChatGPT also saves time in research where normal research on any topic may take a few hours, ChatGPT can do it within the matter of minutes, a full compilation of the best pieces of information to compare. In addition to compiling and comparing information, ChatGPT can also provide assessments of that information.
So the use of ChatGPT, while still new, offers exciting possibilities for mankind buts misuse cannot be overlooked.