Creativity and grit are the foundations of high school. Staying persistent in your work and creative in your work will give you high grades and a feeling of success. On November 30th, a tool known as ChatGPT was released. A tool that could possibly change the traditional style of schooling and how kids work.  

Background

In school one day, a friend told me about a website that allows you to ask any questions and get a well-thought-out response. 

When I explored the website I was shocked. I found you can ask any question about any topic and get a detailed answer. 

I was surprised because this website could be used as a tool to minimize the amount of work in school. 

The website isn’t like anything you have ever seen before. It writes essays, explanations, and codes.   

How It Works 

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence that can write essays, explain complex topics, and develop ideas for anyone.

It was developed by the company OpenAI. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that has developed 5 eye-opening AI products. 

ChatGPT itself is by far their most successful. It has gained nearly 1 million users in a few days and is completely free to use. 

ChatGPT utilizes machine learning. It processes and understands sequential data, and works very similar to a human brain. It can identify patterns in data and construct predictions about what should happen next.

The bot has an unfathomable amount of data from all over the internet. The bot was trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). In simpler terms, humans provided ChatGPT with conversations to teach the bot how to write and talk similarly to humans. 

ChatGPT doesn’t just copy human conversations and repeats them, but it rather creates an accurate representation of the ideas and concepts of writing.  

The Extent of Usage 

ChatGPT can essentially be used for anything. 

• Write essays 
• Debug & explain code 
• Make questions 
• Explain articles 
• Makes annotated bibliographies 
• Generates ideas 
• Translates text 
• Creates marketing content 
• Creates personalized content (Email & text responses)  

With an itinerary this large, the possibilities are nearly endless.

When testing the possibilities of ChatGPT, I decided to see if a plagiarism scanner would pick up on it, and the results were shocking. 

After a few tests, I discovered that when only a paragraph or two is written, the plagiarism scanner doesn’t work, however, when an entire essay is written by ChatGPT the plagiarism scanner picks up a few generated sentences. 

ChatGPT also has the ability to write in different styles. You can give the AI a paragraph that you had previously written and ask it to construct another paragraph or essay about a different topic but in your style of writing. 

Ethical Implications  

The main question that arises about ChatGPT is whether it should be allowed in the scenario of a classroom. 

Pentucket High School English teacher Mr. Casey responded, “It depends on the context, I think if you are answering comprehension questions I don’t think you should be allowed to use it.”

I asked Mr. Casey if he was worried about ChatGPT, and he responded “It’s a major concern because it’s tempting. If you are up late at night and you have an assignment it’s hard to resist that temptation. In the long run, it’s going to destroy your ability to learn.”    

ChatGPT dissuades students from doing critical thinking on their own. 

The use of ChatGPT is unethical simply because of plagiarism. It isn’t your own work, therefore, it can cause real turmoil in your learning habits.  

Conclusion  

Overall, ChatGPT is an advanced tool that a lot of students use, however, it’s important that reliance is not built upon the tool. 

As technology advances in this modern era so will many aspects of our life that we never imagined. 

In the end, it’s important that school isn’t affected by tools that cut out critical thinking.