ChatGPT In Schools Let's Use It To Teach

I recently gave a talk to a group of K-12 (elementary and secondary) public school teachers and administrators in New York The topic was artificial intelligence and how schools should adapt to prepare students for a future filled with all kinds of competent artificial intelligence (AI) tools

However, I found that my audience only cared about one AI tool: ChatGPT, the trendy chatbot powered by OpenAI that is capable of writing coherent essays, solving scientific and mathematical problems, and generating functional computer code ChatGPT is new—launched at the end of November—but it has already caused many educators to panic

Students are using it to write their assignments, passing off as their own essays and sets of solved problems generated by the AI Teachers and school administrators have been making efforts to spot students using the cheating tool and are concerned about the havoc ChatGPT could wreak on their curricula

(Some publications have declared, perhaps prematurely, that ChatGPT has killed homework altogether ) Student cheating is the immediate and practical fear, along with the bot's propensity for generating incorrect or misleading answers

But there are also existential concerns A high school teacher told me that he used ChatGPT to assess some of his students' work and that the app provided more detailed and helpful feedback than he did, in a small fraction of the time

“Am I necessary now?” he asked me, half joking Some schools have responded to ChatGPT by cracking down

For example, New York City public schools recently blocked access to ChatGPT on school networks and computers, citing “concerns about negative impacts on student learning, as well as concerns about security and reliability ” Of content"

Schools in other cities, such as Seattle, have also restricted access (Tim Robinson, a spokesman for the Seattle Public School System, told me that ChatGPT was blocked on school devices in December, “along with five other cheat tools

”) It is easy to understand why educators feel threatened ChatGPT is an extraordinarily capable tool that appeared on your realities without warning and works reasonably well for a wide variety of tasks and academic subjects

There are legitimate questions about the ethics of AI-generated writing and concerns about whether the answers ChatGPT provides are correct (often they are not) I sympathize with teachers who feel they already have too much to worry about to add ai-generated assignments to the mix

But after talking to dozens of educators over the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that banning ChatGPT in classrooms is the wrong move Instead, I think schools should carefully adopt ChatGPT as a teaching aid, that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside AI systems as adults

IT WON'T WORK BAN IT The first reason not to ban ChatGPT in schools is that it won't work Yes, a school may block the ChatGPT website on school-owned devices and networks

But students have phones, laptops, and many other ways to access it outside of class Some teachers have high hopes for tools like GPTZero, a program created by a Princeton University student who claims to be able to detect something written by an AI

But these tools are not reliable or accurate, and it is relatively easy to fool them by changing a few words or using a different AI program to paraphrase certain passages AI chatbots could be programmed to mark their results in some way, making it easier for teachers to spot AI-generated text

But this is also a fragile defense Right now, ChatGPT is the only free and easy-to-use chatbot of its caliber

But there will be others, and students will soon be able to choose from several apps, including probably some that don't leave any AI footprints Even if it were technically possible to block ChatGPT, Do teachers want to spend their nights and weekends getting up to date with the latest AI detection software? Several educators I spoke with said that while the idea of ​​students cheating with ChatGPT irritated them, the process of policing and detecting AI sounded even worse

Rather than begin an endless game of whack-a-mole against an ever-expanding army of AI chatbots, I offer a suggestion: For the remainder of the academic year, schools should treat ChatGPT as usual the same way they treat calculators: allow it for some tasks but not others and assume that unless students are being supervised in person and with their devices confiscated, they are most likely using it

Then, during the summer holidays, Teachers might modify their teaching plans—for example, replacing home tests with class tests or group discussions—to try to keep cheaters at bay AN EDUCATOR'S BEST FRIEND The second reason not to ban ChatGPT in the classroom is that, with the right strategy, it can be an effective teaching tool

Cherie Shield, a high school English teacher in Oregon, told me that she had recently assigned students in one of her classes to use ChatGPT to create outlines for their essays comparing and contrasting two 19th century short stories that deal with gender and gender issues mental health: “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Tapestry” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Once the schematics are generated, her students put away their laptops and wrote their essays by hand The process, he claimed, had not only deepened the understanding of the stories

He had also taught students how to interact with AI models and figure out the right way to get a useful response from one of them “They have to understand, 'I need this to produce a schematic on X, Y and Z,' and they have to think about it very carefully,” Shields said

"And if they don't get the result they're looking for, they can always review and modify it " Schema creation is just one of the many ways ChatGPT can be used in class

You could write personalized lesson plans for each student (“explain Newton's laws of motion to a visual-spatial learner”) and brainstorm ideas for classroom activities (“write a script for an episode of 'Friends' that takes place in the Constitutional Convention") It could serve as an after-hours tutor (“Explain the Doppler effect using language an eighth grader can understand”) or a debate practice rival (“Convince me animal testing should be banned”)

It could be used as a starting point for exercises in class or as a tool for English learners to improve their basic writing skills (The “Ditch That Textbook” teaching blog has a long list of possible classroom uses for ChatGPT

) Even ChatGPT's flaws—such as the fact that its answers to factual questions are often incorrect—can become material for critical thinking exercises Several professors told me that they had asked students to try to get ChatGPT wrong or to rate their answers the same way a teacher would rate a student's

IT TEACHES ABOUT THE WORLD THEY WILL INHABITE Now, I'll take off my tech columnist hat for a second to confess that writing this article has made me a little sad I loved school and it kind of pains me to think that instead of honing your skills by writing essays on Ernest Hemingway's “Fiesta” or struggling to factor a trigonometric expression, today's students could simply ask an AI chatbot to do it for them

I also don't think educators who reflexively oppose ChatGPT are being unreasonable This kind of AI really is (and forgive me for using this buzzword) disruptive: to classroom routines, to long-standing pedagogical practices, and to the basic tenet that student work should reflect cogitation

that happens inside their brains, rather than in the latent space of a machine learning model hosted on a remote supercomputer But the barricade has fallen

Tools like ChatGPT aren't going away; they're only going to get better, and barring some regulatory intervention, this particular form of computer intelligence is now a fixture of our society "Great language models are not going to get any less capable in the next few years," said Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

“We need to find a way to accommodate these tools and not just ban them ” In fact, that's the main reason not to ban it from the classroom: Today's students will be graduating into a world filled with generative AI programs

They will need to know these tools—their strengths and weaknesses, their features and blind spots—in order to work alongside them In order to be good citizens, they will need hands-on experience to understand how this type of AI works, what kind of biases it contains, and how it could be misused and even harmful

This adjustment will not be easy Sudden technological changes rarely are

But who better to guide students in this strange new world than their teachers? c 2023 The New York Times Company

Several educators I spoke with said that while the idea of ​​students cheating with ChatGPT irritated them, the process of policing and detecting AI sounded even worse Rather than begin an endless game of whack-a-mole against an ever-expanding army of AI chatbots, I offer a suggestion: For the remainder of the academic year, schools should treat ChatGPT as usual the same way they treat calculators: allow it for some tasks but not others and assume that unless students are being supervised in person and with their devices confiscated, they are most likely using it Then, during the summer holidays, Teachers might modify their teaching plans—for example, replacing home tests with class tests or group discussions—to try to keep cheaters at bay AN EDUCATOR'S BEST FRIEND The second reason not to ban ChatGPT in the classroom is that, with the right strategy, it can be an effective teaching tool Cherie Shield, a high school English teacher in Oregon, told me that she had recently assigned students in one of her classes to use ChatGPT to create outlines for their essays comparing and contrasting two 19th century short stories that deal with gender and gender issues mental health: “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Tapestry” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Once the schematics are generated, her students put away their laptops and wrote their essays by hand The process, he claimed, had not only deepened the understanding of the stories He had also taught students how to interact with AI models and figure out the right way to get a useful response from one of them “They have to understand, 'I need this to produce a schematic on X, Y and Z,' and they have to think about it very carefully,” Shields said "And if they don't get the result they're looking for, they can always review and modify it " Schema creation is just one of the many ways ChatGPT can be used in class You could write personalized lesson plans for each student (“explain Newton's laws of motion to a visual-spatial learner”) and brainstorm ideas for classroom activities (“write a script for an episode of 'Friends' that takes place in the Constitutional Convention") It could serve as an after-hours tutor (“Explain the Doppler effect using language an eighth grader can understand”) or a debate practice rival (“Convince me animal testing should be banned”) It could be used as a starting point for exercises in class or as a tool for English learners to improve their basic writing skills (The “Ditch That Textbook” teaching blog has a long list of possible classroom uses for ChatGPT ) Even ChatGPT's flaws—such as the fact that its answers to factual questions are often incorrect—can become material for critical thinking exercises Several professors told me that they had asked students to try to get ChatGPT wrong or to rate their answers the same way a teacher would rate a student's IT TEACHES ABOUT THE WORLD THEY WILL INHABITE Now, I'll take off my tech columnist hat for a second to confess that writing this article has made me a little sad I loved school and it kind of pains me to think that instead of honing your skills by writing essays on Ernest Hemingway's “Fiesta” or struggling to factor a trigonometric expression, today's students could simply ask an AI chatbot to do it for them I also don't think educators who reflexively oppose ChatGPT are being unreasonable This kind of AI really is (and forgive me for using this buzzword) disruptive: to classroom routines, to long-standing pedagogical practices, and to the basic tenet that student work should reflect cogitation that happens inside their brains, rather than in the latent space of a machine learning model hosted on a remote supercomputer But the barricade has fallen Tools like ChatGPT aren't going away; they're only going to get better, and barring some regulatory intervention, this particular form of computer intelligence is now a fixture of our society "Great language models are not going to get any less capable in the next few years," said Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania “We need to find a way to accommodate these tools and not just ban them ” In fact, that's the main reason not to ban it from the classroom: Today's students will be graduating into a world filled with generative AI programs They will need to know these tools—their strengths and weaknesses, their features and blind spots—in order to work alongside them In order to be good citizens, they will need hands-on experience to understand how this type of AI works, what kind of biases it contains, and how it could be misused and even harmful This adjustment will not be easy Sudden technological changes rarely are But who better to guide students in this strange new world than their teachers?