PARK: ChatGPT should not be only seen as threat to academic integrity
Column: The Queue
ChatGPT is an online chat software developed by OpenAI in November 2022. The chatbot is able to write cognizant essays and code, all while solving STEM problems, and its answers are uniquely crafted for each user. This platform is seemingly every educator's greatest fear and every student’s greatest asset.
This is not the first software that aids in solving problems or writing things for you, though. Applications like Mathway, Photomath and Anyword all encompass elements of what ChatGPT can do.
The most glaring issue with ChatGPT in universities is the concern of cheating and plagiarism.
More than 60 percent of college students have admitted to cheating during their time at university. Whether that be getting someone to complete your assignment, cheating on an exam — in-person or online — or even paraphrasing a friend's essay and submitting that as your own. It is inevitable, and with classes operating more commonly online or in asynchronous formats, cheating has become even more prevalent.
While some schools have begun to ban the chatbot, educational institutions should take care to find the benefits that programs like these offer and not just see them as ways to cheat. Universities can alter the way they structure education and learning, but they should not ban ChatGPT in schools.
Artificial intelligence may incentivize cheating and even encourage it, but what schools must understand is that there is no real way to stop it. Edward Tian, a 22-year-old Princeton student has tried. He created an app that can detect whether a piece of work, written or coded, was generated by artificial intelligence. But this is only in its beginning stages and cannot be considered as completely reliable.
Regarding our campus, Rutgers cannot and should not make each student complete every assignment with Respondus' LockDown Browser. This would take away from the learning process just as much as submitting artificially crafted work.
Professors can continue to preach academic integrity and force anti-cheating tactics, and students will continue to hear the same spiel in nearly every class. Instead, educators should focus on making classes interesting and making students want to learn. By engaging students in discussions and learning, educators will incentivize them to absorb the material.
Laptops cannot simply be banned in college either. Whether the University decides to ban ChatGPT or not, students can and will find a way around it, and universities cannot avoid that. So instead of fighting it, the best option for universities would be to utilize it and let this piece of artificial intelligence help make our lives more efficient while also still prioritizing learning.
It is also important to note that for students, a chatbot is not going to save you from writing essays or doing assignments — at least quality ones. I inserted a previous essay prompt from the AP U.S. Government Exam I took in high school and waited to see what ChatGPT would spit out. The result was subpar.
The prompt asked for an argumentative essay with evidence from a foundational document. In the chatbot's essay, if you could even call it that, the quotes were messy, the argument was very surface level and some sentences even stated false facts. As Rutgers students, our professors expect a certain standard of effort and work which extend beyond what ChatGPT can do, even though its capabilities are still impressive.
Personally, I take pride in the things I write and would never think of plagiarizing an essay. Maybe that is the journalist in me, but I would much rather take the time to write something than save an hour of my life and have a chatbot write a paper for me.
That is not to say artificial intelligence is not and cannot be helpful. I could write an essay on my own and send it through ChatGPT to edit for grammatical errors and sentence structure. There are similar tools like Grammarly which exist to help people edit their writing. Why should we not use ChatGPT for the same thing? A second source of editing is always helpful, and if the chatbot is capable, we might as well use it as such.
Another great use of the platform would be to generate citations. Websites like EasyBib are sometimes a pain to use, and you have to watch an advertisement for it to spit out more than five citations. If you put in the book title, publisher and publishing date for ChatGPT, though, it will produce a perfectly crafted citation in any style you ask.
Outside of writing aid, you can ask ChatGPT to briefly summarize something. When asked to "explain the carbon cycle," the chatbot crafted a multi-paragraph response. The first paragraph explained the carbon cycle in layman’s terms, and the second two went into a little more detail. This is helpful whether you need to know an in-depth definition or just a basic description.
Universities and professors are fearing the use of artificial intelligence in their classrooms. But instead of banning it, they must instead address that it can be a very useful tool in the classroom. Even for teachers, ChatGPT can produce simple lesson plans and other organizational benefits.
By showing students how to properly utilize chatbots to enhance their learning, it can help everyone to grow intellectually in a technologically advanced world. This is, in fact, where our future is heading, so let us find ways to maximize artificial intelligence in and out of classrooms. And to universities like Rutgers — keep classes engaging and make students want to learn. Banning "cheating tools" is not going to stop the academic integrity issue that will long remain on college campuses.
Annabel Park is a sophomore at Rutgers Business School majoring in marketing and minoring in health administration. Her column, "The Queue," runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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