More like CheatGPT.
About one in five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT admit to using the OpenAI technology to help them do their schoolwork, a new Pew Research Center study has found.
The researchers determined that a majority of teens know of ChatGPT, leading them to conclude that 13% of all US teens have utilized the chatbot to complete their assignments.
The team surveyed teens 13 to 17, finding that older students are particularly likely to employ ChatGPT for classwork.
“It’s out there,” Pengcheng Shi, an associate dean in the Department of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, told The Post on Monday.
“You cannot stop people from using it, so now the question becomes, how to best use it,” he added.
ChatGPT has raised many questions since it was released for public use nearly a year ago, with a major one being: When is it ethical and acceptable to use it?
The Pew Research Center found that most students believe it is OK to use ChatGPT to research a new topic, but less so to solve math problems.
Few teens thought it was acceptable to use it to write essays.
About 20% of students admitted to being unsure about the ethics of utilizing the technology in those three scenarios.
“I think the pressure here is less on students, and much more on faculty to really find a way to incorporate new technologies,” Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at CUNY Queens College, told The Post.
He equated banning the use of ChatGPT to teaching abstinence in sex education classes, which has been linked to higher teen pregnancy rates.
“You have to explain how these systems work, what the data sets are, why the data sets are flawed and why this isn’t an acceptable way of handing in a paper,” Cohen said.
Shi agrees and does not consider using ChatGPT cheating, instead encouraging teachers to adapt to the new technology.
Shi believes that educators should rethink how to teach and assess students, encourage creativity and reassess educational objectives.
However, some teachers and administrators do consider the use of AI cheating — and several scandals have unfolded across the country.
As more people use ChatGPT and other advanced technologies, some experts warn that some college degrees and jobs could become obsolete.
But others insist that these claims are simply fear-mongering.
“This is just one iteration of future technologies that will come out that will expedite learning or expedite knowledge gathering,” Cohen said.