You may have heard or read about ChatGPT, an online tool that became publicly available in November
January 19, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
You may have heard or read about ChatGPT, an online tool that became publicly available in November—if not, I recommend that you read this Chronicle of Higher Educationarticle. I also encourage you to try it yourselves, as direct interaction with the tool will give you a better sense of its capabilities and allow you to see firsthand how it might be used by you or your students in and outside of the classroom.
As an AI text generation tool, ChatGPT reflects an evolved and sophisticated technology that users describe as quite good and that will likely continue to develop. As with earlier tools and services (e.g., calculators, CliffsNotes, and spellcheck), the advent and potential widespread usage of ChatGPT is creating a great deal of concern in education. Currently usage appears to be undetectable in many settings, therefore widely-used plagiarism detection tools are not effective (though work is being done on this front
). However, ChatGPT has many applications beyond generating written texts. It can, for instance, create code in the programming language of the user’s choice and provide solutions to calculus problems, among others.
If you would like to learn more about the potential impact of artificial intelligence tools on teaching and learning, the following events are being held over the next two weeks:
