#651 gpt

_posts/2023/dec/2023-12-26-chatgpt-as-a-threat.md

@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Defend Me Against ChatGPT"
+date: 2023-12-26
+place: Moscow, Russia
+tags: ai
+description: |
+  If students are permitted to use ChatGPT as a paper-writing aid, 
+  teachers must possess a tool to detect the presence of 
+  generative AI in their texts.
+keywords:
+  - ChatGPT is a threat
+  - fear of ChatGPT
+  - students and ChatGPT
+  - ChatGPT generating AI
+  - AI threat
+image: /images/2023/12/terminator.jpg
+jb_picture:
+  caption: Terminator (1984) by James Cameron
+---
+
+I do enjoy [ChatGPT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT) a lot. 
+The blog post you're reading now was written by me and
+then given to ChatGPT to fix its grammar and polish the writing style. Until
+recently, since 2014, when I wrote my [first blog post]({% pst 2014/apr/2014-04-06-introduction %}), 
+I used the service of a
+few proofreaders, who charged me $20-40 per hour to rewrite 
+[all of my 350+ texts](/contents.html). 
+Now, I pay a few dollars a month to [OpenAI](https://openai.com/). However, while the value of
+this generative AI is obvious, I also experience serious harm from ChatGPT,
+especially when reading papers written by my students with its help.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+{% jb_picture_body %}
+
+Should students be allowed to use ChatGPT when they write their coursework,
+diplomas, and research papers?
+[Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03507-3),
+[The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/teachers-ai-classroom-schools-678d7d84),
+[The New York Tiimes](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/learning/students-chatgpt.html), 
+and
+[MIT Technology Review](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/06/1071059/chatgpt-change-not-destroy-education-openai/)
+believe that despite all the risks, we have no other choice: students will use
+it, no matter what teachers think about it.
+
+{% quote Most of them will never read what the robot wrote. %}
+
+Indeed, why not? What's wrong with letting kids write those boring documents
+faster? Nothing, if we ignore the obvious threat: most of them will never read
+what the robot wrote. They simply prompt a very short description of the task
+and get back a full-blown piece of text with all the necessary bells and
+whistles. Moreover, with the next prompt, the text can be made even more
+academic, sophisticated, smart, and deep. The text, not the student.
+
+But it's not the threat I worry about. I'm much more concerned about the quality
+of feedback teachers will provide to students equipped with ChatGPT or a
+similar paper-writing robot. My relatively [short experience]({% pst 2021/dec/2021-12-01-teaching %}) in teaching
+(just [three years](/teaching.html)) tells me that the biggest challenge in teaching is quickly
+dividing students into smart+enthusiastic (20%) and 
+[unmotivated](https://www.gcu.edu/blog/teaching-school-administration/myth-unmotivated-students) (80%), before
+the latter category entirely exhausts me, and I classify all students
+as "pointless waste of time" and give everybody an "A" just to get rid of
+them.
+
+When students write papers by themselves, without the help of 
+[generative AI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence),
+they make mistakes that are easy to spot: the grammar is wrong, the structure
+is messy, the logic of the discussion is weak, and so on. Lazy and/or
+stupid students reveal themselves in the first round of paper review. I
+can quickly understand who I'm dealing with and stop paying attention to them.
+The students who are smart and enthusiastic win, because they get my entire
+attention. The unmotivated ones lose, but who cares.
+
+{% quote Now, it takes much more time for me to understand who is who. %}
+
+However, with the help of ChatGPT, the situation changes dramatically. Now, the
+papers I have to review _all_ look _perfect_: the grammar is spotless, the
+structure is solid, and the flow of thoughts is logical. In other words, the
+unmotivated students now look like smart and enthusiastic ones, while they are
+not. Now, it takes much more time for me to understand who is who. Sometimes I
+can't figure it out for weeks, especially if the teaching is remote and I don't
+see students but only communicate with them in chats or conference calls.
+
+I keep wasting my time on students who don't care. All they need from me is a
+passing grade, but ChatGPT makes them look like promising talents who I should
+invest my time in. In the end, the students who really need my time don't get
+it, thanks to ChatGPT.
+
+Thus, I see ChatGPT as a big threat to the education process and believe that
+very soon, tools that validate texts for the presence of generative AI in them
+will become powerful enough to _defend_ me from ChatGPT.
+