What is ChatGPT? For those somewhat new to the technology, ChatGPT was launched in November 2022 by AI research company OpenAI. Free to all users (at least for now), it is classified as a language model chatbot that can interact with its users in a conversational manner when asked a question or instructed to perform a task.
What Can ChatGPT Do? You might call ChatGPT predictive text on steroids. Far beyond anticipating what your next word or phrase might be when typing an email, ChatGPT can string together whole thoughts and information blocks into (nearly) perfect written text, such as essays, song lyrics, standard legal documents, poems, recipes, correspondence, process descriptions, and more.
What Are ChatGPT’s Limitations? This new technology is emerging and will, no doubt, get better over time. However, it currently has a number of limitations that should inspire caution when trusting its output. For example, when announcing the new chatbot, OpenAI offered the following disclaimer: “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.
The Ethics Debate The introduction of ChatGPT has sparked heated debate about the ethics of using such a tool. Some of the controversy centers around the fear that chatbots like ChatGPT will take away more jobs from humans, whether it’s from managers, writers, administrative staff, or even programmers.
ChatGPT’s Impact on College Student Initially, students will have to assess for themselves to what extent they will use the new chatbot without “crossing the line.” For example, it should go without saying that students should not use ChatGPT for taking tests, writing research papers, or completing major course assignments. But ChatGPT can certainly be useful when gathering information from across sources and assimilating it into cohesive text.
Adapting to the New AI Technology How higher education addresses the impact of ChatGPT on its students and learning outcomes is evolving. Many are comparing the introduction of ChatGPT to the addition of the calculator into the educational system decades ago.
The Hallmark of Liberal Arts Education At the end of the day, ChatGPT and similar technologies may be a blessing in disguise in taking students back to the foundation of a liberal arts education - critical thinking – which has always been the hallmark of education at Ottawa University.