A student bogged down with assignments logs onto OpenAI’s ChatGPT website and types, “Write a five paragraph essay explaining the themes of ‘1984’ by George Orwell without plagiarism with quotes in MLA format.”
In roughly one minute, the online artificial intelligence chat system writes a five-paragraph, 500-word essay detailing how the dystopian book discusses the danger of totalitarianism, the power of language and the manipulation of truth through its characters, setting and action.
“These themes are relevant today and serve as a reminder of the importance of individual freedom, free thought, and free speech,” the conclusion of the AI-generated essay reads. “The novel serves as a warning against the dangers of unchecked power and a cautionary tale about the dangers of a society where truth and free expression are controlled and manipulated by a single entity.”
ChatGPT is one of dozens of artificial intelligence services that have become widely available to the public in the past few months. It has “learned” large swaths of the internet and is surprisingly deft at delivering very specific information to the person “chatting” with it. The easy with which students can potentially interact with such chatbots is one reason teachers are seeing AI is both an opportunity and a threat. In the above example, a student would only need to copy the AI-written essay and paste it into a word processing document before submitting it to their English teacher for grading.
A recent study fed questions from four university-level law exams into ChatGPT and graded the chatbot’s answers. It scored a C+, a low but passing grade.
Erica Johnson, an English teacher at Starkville High School, said while the problem is incredibly new it is still a problem, and it can impact individual and unique thoughts from students.
“I hadn’t heard about this until recently – this school year, to be honest,” Johnson said. “I have major concerns regarding this type of AI. … We want students to process, think and create. It seems like this type of AI doesn’t require any of that, and it also creates an issue with plagiarism. If it’s a ‘new’ piece of writing, our current plagiarism detectors may not flag the writing. I know programs are being developed to flag pieces created by ChatGPT and others, but it still concerns me as an English teacher. I want my students to create and develop their own essays, poems and stories. Problem-solving and creativity are going to be affected by these technologies.”
AI is not new, but the emergence of its accessibility and ways it can be used are.
Mimmo Pairsi, director of the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center at Mississippi State University, said AI is the decision-making process behind movement, and it is all possible because of collecting available data.
It is used every day with online banking, Netflix and TikTok suggestions based on your watch history and Amazon suggestions. However, it is still up to the human using AI to decide for themselves what they want to watch or buy.
“Instead of having a human to make the decision on whether or not something is to be done, that process is now automated by artificial intelligence,” Parisi said. “… AI is an automation of the decision-making process, so the next thing is in order for AI to work, you need data. It’s like humans – you make a decision based on what you know. … The question right now for AI is at what point should humans intervene in the decision-making process, and that debate is still out there.”
The uses of AI are abundant in today’s technology-centric world, and now schools are adapting to prepare their students for future careers but with caution to not let technology do the thinking or creative work.
Teachers like Johnson are using the tech in their classrooms to supplement education and to help teachers get more instruction and one-on-one time with their students.
“I use Grammarly, NoRedInk and Turnitin regularly in my English classroom,” Johnson said, referring to software that suggests edits to computer documents and detect plagiarism. “I have had an Alexa in the past and have seen colleagues use tools like that to create routines, encourage deeper inquiry and help with brainstorming writing. Some of our reading instruction tools use Adaptive Technology to gauge where students are, how they are progressing and what areas of review they need to continue towards mastery. … Honestly, the way AI is progressing, I don’t know of any curriculum that it wouldn’t pair well with.”
Pat Perdue, an English teacher at Heritage Academy, has worked in education since 1972 and has seen the evolution of the reliance on technology in the classroom go from typewriters to using smartphone apps every day in class. She uses programs like Grammarly in class and said students benefit from a program that is more watchful than spellcheck to look for grammatical errors and sentence structure.
Perdue said it is important to adapt with the times but not to rely solely on AI to do the work for the students, especially if it takes away from critical thinking.
“I feel like many educators (do) – it’s here, so how can we use it?” Perdue said. “What can we do and how can we better educate our students through the proper use of these things? We want to support academic independence and self-reliance, but we’re not going to be able to get away from the fact that these AI programs are going to be part of academia forever and ever now.”
New Hope Middle School English teacher Nicole Dozier-Jones holds a similar sentiment.
“We want our students to be authentically intelligent,” Jones said. “We want our students to be able to think for themselves. I think that one of the goals for education, for me personally, is to develop independent thinkers, learners and doers. If students are able to say (to AI), ‘Write me an essay on this theme or this topic,’ and the student has not done any of the work besides talking back and forth to the chat, I do have a problem with that because the child is not constructing his or her own thoughts.”
Balance, not ban
Parisi said the key to AI helping human progress is to use it responsibly, which comes with proper laws and regulations. However, it will be up to school districts and the schools within them to make policies regarding the use of AI.
“If used in a responsible way, technology can be used to further human progress,” Parisi said. “If misused, it can only benefit a small group of people at the detriment of others. … You set that up by creating governance, which is very important in this process. You think about this new technology, who is going to control this technology being used in a responsible way? Right now it’s left to pretty much anyone to make the decision of creating a governing structure or policy that actually makes sure the technology is used in a responsible way.”
Annunciation Catholic School English teacher Leah Shackelford said banning AI platforms like ChatGPT will never work.
“I think overall it needs to be embraced, and we need to find a way to use it effectively and instructively while at the same time possessing the things that are always going to be important – those writing skills that are always going to be necessary for students to find success,” Shackelford said.
Johnson pointed out there are programs being developed to flag pieces created by ChatGPT and other online AI, but one way to know if a student wrote a paper is by getting to know them early in the year.
“The creation of new systems to detect the use of this type of technology will help avoid some of the pitfalls,” Johnson said. “Having students physically write on paper at the beginning of the year will help by allowing teachers to get to know their students’ voices. Honestly, it’s so new to me that I really don’t know what parameters we will have to create to use it effectively.”
Though the AI to identify if an essay is AI-generated isn’t readily available for teachers nor 100 percent accurate, it exists. Right now, teachers are relying on their own human intelligence to get to know their students.
Perdue and Shackelford both said it is easy to tell when one of their students didn’t write something because “their voice isn’t in it,” and it is something AI will never replace – the human element to writing.
“The goal of my class is to teach thinking and to be able to express your thoughts, to be able to communicate, in writing,” Perdue said. “… So when someone writes a paper, I don’t even need to look at their names. Usually by the first nine weeks, I can hear their voices in their writing. If you’re just turning in something one of these AI programs did, your voice won’t be there. It’s the same thing as copying and pasting an article from Wikipedia.”
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