Teachers have been troubled for years by ChatGPT’s ability to help students cheat on assignments. Generative AI offers an attractive shortcut, as it can write college essays or solve math problems in a fraction of the time. Professors have accused students of using ChatGPT to complete assignments, whether accurately or inaccurately.
Education Company Chegg Estimates It is estimated that 40% of undergraduate students worldwide are using generative AI in higher education, and half of those use tools like ChatGPT at least once a day.
But education experts speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference on Wednesday believe that nearly two years after the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, generative AI can be an asset to teachers, rather than a shortcut for students.
When ChatGPT was announced, there was a “knee-jerk” reaction among educators that students would start plagiarizing their assignments, said Sonita Jeyapati, co-director of the Centre for Pro Bono and Clinical Legal Education at the National University of Singapore. But “we realised we could use ChatGPT to our advantage.” [Gen AI] Just like that.”
Khairul Anwar, founder of Malaysian education technology startup Pandai, said teachers are looking to AI developers for help with lesson planning, student motivation and professional development.
AI developers are also building apps to help students with their studies: Pandai has built a chatbot that helps students with their homework, but doesn’t do it for them.
“It’s designed to provide step-by-step solutions rather than just giving you the answer. It asks the students themselves what they understand now and what they think the next step should be,” Anwar said.
But chatbots are just the tip of the iceberg.
“There’s a lot more going on in AI than just big language models,” said Tim Baldwin, president of the Mohammed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, giving the example of AI that can train students how to learn and tailor curriculum to their strengths, opening up personalized tutoring to students who traditionally couldn’t afford it.
The panelists agreed that AI-enabled fraud is not a new phenomenon.
Jeypathy said it’s natural for students to want to find easier ways to get good grades, and she suggested that students’ motivation levels and the values of their institutions influence their decisions to cheat more than access to specific AI tools.
Anwar suggested that teachers and educational institutions needed to emphasize more the value of education, rather than simply promoting learning as a means to material comfort. If education was described as a path to a job, a big house or a luxury car, “this is just a transaction, [and] Obviously students will cheat.”
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