ChatGPT Causes Academic Furore
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The chatbot application with 100 million users worldwide causes academic uproar after student got the AI to write thesis
ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday.
The popular app has raised questions about academic dishonesty and misinformation.
Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) has called for restricted access to ChatGPT after a student successfully presented a diploma thesis written by the program. The AI-powered bot has garnered increasingly widespread attention for its text generation abilities.
The scandal unfolded after a graduate student with the university took to Twitter to share his experience of using ChatGPT to write his diploma thesis on management. In a lengthy thread, the student explained how he had circumvented text length restrictions, also sharing insights into how to use the program to get a coherent text.
A ChatGPT prompt is shown on a device near a public school in Brooklyn, New York, January 5, 2023 © AP / Peter Morgan
The thesis was successfully presented at the university. The student admitted that he received only a minimal passing grade, blaming that result on other factors, namely laughing at the purportedly sloppy presentations by other graduates. All in all, it took the student around 23 hours to ‘write’ his thesis, compared to several weeks spent by his fellow students on their work, according to the thread.
The stunt has received a mixed reception from the Twitter crowd. Some have praised the student for his ingenuity, while others have accused him of cheating. Several users were so enraged by the trick that they wrote complaints to the RGGU and the Russian Education Ministry, calling on officials to investigate and annul the thesis altogether.
The university was quick to condemn the student, urging the authorities to restrict access to ChatGPT for educational facilities. It was not immediately clear how exactly the RGGU seeks to achieve that, given that ChatGPT’s developers have already restricted access to the chatbot for Russian users.
ChatGPT has been accessible for free to anyone with an internet connection since the end of November 2022. Developed by San Francisco-based OpenAI in cooperation with Microsoft, the program has been able to generate text, as well as images and videos, drawing inspiration from a database of digital media.
New York is the largest public school district in the US, and its ban on ChatGPT could inspire others to do likewise. Seeking to avoid a broader ban, OpenAI has released a statement saying it plans to work with schools going forward.
“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system,” the company said, according to AP.
The New York ban affects only the school district’s network and devices, and cannot stop students or staff from accessing the AI at home.
“If decades ago the main problem for universities was plagiarism and unscrupulous borrowing, and this problem was successfully solved, now the educational community is facing a new challenge associated with the use of neural networks and artificial intelligence in scientific and educational activities. Russian and foreign experts have expressed concerns about this issue, and finding a worthy solution is a primary task for the scientific community,” the university told Russian media in a statement.
In separate comments, the RGGU vowed to carry out additional “analysis” of the thesis, both internally and with the involvement of the scientific community. At the same time, the deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education, Aleksandr Mazhuga, urged the university not to annul the thesis, arguing that it has already passed the presentation.
“My opinion is that the result cannot be annulled. But this is a very important signal for our educational community that we need to carefully participate in the process of writing our students’ theses,” Mazhuga told Gazeta.ru.
Source AP/RT/Twitter/Reuters
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