Chat GPT may be one of the most significant technological developments of our time. Upon our return from winter break we were suddenly made aware of the dangers of using Chat GPT to cheat, Bentley had real ethical concerns. As it turns out, these concerns weren’t misplaced. A student at Santa Clara University was reportedly one of the first caught for using the AI chatbot to write an essay last month. SCU professor Brian Green claims that the student submitted an essay entirely written by Chat GPT for his class “Ethics in Artificial Intelligence”. Aside from being hilariously ironic to use artificial intelligence to cheat in the very class meant to discourage one from doing just that, this has real implications for class grading structures and how professors will assess a student’s learning. Essays may become less important, the aforementioned Professor Green states that he will switch to basing the majority of his students’ grades on oral presentations. At Bentley students have witnessed a greater emphasis on class participation. But Chat GPT and artificial intelligence can do more than write essays, in the future professors may have to avoid test banks, online educational resource sharing, and more just to avoid leaving open the opportunity to cheat. For professors it’s a choice between shifting to a more participation based model or designing new tests independently each time they’re given. This is probably one of the most difficult problems facing ethics in education, but hey, maybe we can ask Chat GPT how to solve it.
- Joseph Twomey