ChatGPT Concerns

Just in case you’ve never heard of ChatGPT, here’s a short definition written by one of our CPYU Research Fellows, Brett Wirebaugh: “ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence assistant similar to Siri or Alexa, but considerably more powerful, intelligent, and interactive. Unlike those popular chatbots, ChatGPT doesn’t use voice commands. A user simply types in a question and ChatGPT sifts through billions of online data sources to answer complex questions, solve math problems, write essays, and much more, all in a matter of seconds.” Launched just over a year ago, we’ve been concerned that ChatGPT could be used by students to even write complete papers and assignments, which in effect would be cheating. The Pew Research Center says that one in five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork. While some may have used it to explore a topic, we do believe that we have to teach our kids that they should not use ChatGPT to do their work for them.