ChatGPT Comes to Nation’s High Schools – What’s Next?

ChatGPT is an advanced AI language model developed by Open- AI, a research organization dedicated to creating and promoting friendly AI. It is a cutting-edge technology that is changing the way people interact with computers by enabling more natural and human-like communication. ChatGPT is based on the Transformer architecture and has been trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet. This enables it to generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and prompts, making it an ideal tool for various applications such as customer support, language translation and content generation.

That first paragraph was written by ChatGPT in response to the question, “Write an article to tell readers about ChatGPT.” The site took about 10 seconds to ponder the question and then, accessing its massive dataset of text from the internet, wrote a full article, line by line, in about 30 seconds. If there were a Captcha box at the end, I am sure that ChatGPT would not check the “I am not a robot” box. However, what it produces is clearly good, if not excellent, writing, and when asked a question it has accurate and copious information available, and that writing is comparable to what most humans could produce. Syntax and spelling error free for the most part, ChatGPT can produce answers to just about any question, in verse from short answer to master thesis length.

Alan Turing, the British mathematician who broke Germany’s Enigma code machine to help the Allies win World War II, wrote a paper in 1950 that he called “The Imitation Game.” Its premise was that machines (what we now call computers) could be taught to think and speak and write so well that humans would have a hard time deciding if they were connecting with another person or a set of wires and switches.

With the advent and availability of ChatGPT, that test is now something that every school educator may soon face on a daily basis. The challenge of the “Imitation Game” is so prevalent that there are more than a dozen platforms that can now be used to detect whether a student’s composition was generated by ChatGPT or a similar Artificial Intelligence (AI) program. Even TurnItIn, the standard for checking for plagiarism in student work, has now launched an AI Innovation Lab to try to stay ahead of AI’s advancements.

Like all human endeavors, the capability of ChatGPT has been tested in various ways to see just how far it can go. ChatGPT has received passing grades, ranging from C to A-, on a plethora of exams including U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, a business management course exam from the Wharton School of Business, and getting a 1020 on the SATs. It does better in tests that require essay or long-answer responses, as that is its initial purpose, but it will not be long before it will be better at answering short-answer or multiple-choice questions.

OpenAI continues to update its product and after offering it at no cost initially, has now added a subscription level while keeping the basic version free. The subscription, introduced at $20 per month, provides access during times when the free ChatGPT is unavailable to write your paper (that happens several times a day) and thus is more reliable. The response time is also more efficient, producing results faster (but not necessarily better). For those who are in no hurry to use the service to create their next essay, promotional ad or homework assignment, the subscription would not be beneficial. Others who need that help under deadline, either business or educational ones, would consider the $20 a wise investment.

To use the free version, one simply goes to the website (chat. openai.com) and creates an account. The site uses SSO (Single Sign On) with Google making that even easier. A code is sent by text to your cell phone to verify that you are you, and you are presented with a screen where your question or essay parameters can be submitted for processing. Moments later, your completed essay is there to be reviewed, edited or shared as is. One might wonder how much of it is plagiarized directly from articles and websites, but that is yet to be determined. From our use, it appears that ChatGPT’s AI rephrases the thoughts it finds by considering multiple sources for each statement.

It is clear that AI applications like ChatGPT will continue to get better and more human-like. In addition, systems will be developed in parallel to be able to play the Imitation Game. The only real question is how will this change our understanding and appreciation of the written word. The human writing this wanted to end with “Time will tell,” but ChatGPT suggested “Only time will reveal the truth.’’