When ChatGPT was released, many schools felt like they\u2019d been hit by an asteroid.
Last November, when ChatGPT was released, many schools felt as if they\u2019d been hit by an asteroid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the middle of an academic year, with no warning, teachers were forced to confront the new, alien-seeming technology, which allowed students to write college-level essays, solve challenging problem sets and ace standardised tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some schools responded \u2013 unwisely, I argued at the time \u2013 by banning ChatGPT and tools like it. But those bans didn\u2019t work, in part because students could simply use the tools on their phones and home computers. And as the year went on, many of the schools that restricted the use of generative artificial intelligence \u2013 as the category that includes ChatGPT, Bing, Bard and other tools is called \u2013 quietly rolled back their bans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahead of this school year, I talked with numerK-12 teachers, school administrators and university faculty members about their thoughts on AI now. There is a lot of confusion and panic, but also a fair bit of curiosity and excitement. Mainly, educators want to know: How do we actually use this stuff to help students learn, rather than just try to catch them cheating?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m a tech columnist, not a teacher, and I don\u2019t have all the answers, especially when it comes to the long-term effects of AI on education. But I can offer some basic, short-term advice for schools trying to figure out how to handle generative AI this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, I encourage educators \u2013 especially in high schools and colleges \u2013 to assume that 100% of their students are using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools on every assignment, in every subject, unless they\u2019re being physically supervised inside a school building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At most schools, this won\u2019t be completely true. Some students won\u2019t use AI because they have moral qualms about it, because it\u2019s not helpful for their specific assignments, because they lack access to the tools, or because they\u2019re afraid of getting caught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the assumption that everyone is using AI outside class might be closer to the truth than many educators realise. (\u201cYou have no idea how much we\u2019re using ChatGPT,\u201d read the title of a recent essay by a Columbia undergraduate in the Chronicle of Higher Education.) And it\u2019s a helpful shortcut for teachers trying to figure out how to adapt their teaching methods. Why would you assign a take-home exam, or an essay on\u201cJane Eyre,\u201d if everyone in class \u2013 except, perhaps, the most strait-laced rule-followers \u2013 will use AI to finish it? Why wouldn\u2019t you switch to proctored exams, blue-book essays and in-class group work, if you knew that ChatGPT was as ubiquitas Instagram and Snapchat among your students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, schools should stop relying on AI detector programs to catch cheaters. There are dozens of these tools on the market now, all claiming to spot writing that was generated with AI, and none of them work reliably well. They generate lots of false positives, and can be easily fooled by techniques like paraphrasing. Don\u2019t believe me? Ask OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, which discontinued its AI writing detector this year because of a\u201clow rate of accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s possible that in the future, AI companies may be able to label their models\u2019 outputs to make them easier to spot \u2013 a practice known as\u201cwatermarking\u201d \u2013 or that better AI detection tools may emerge. But for now, most AI text should be considered undetectable, and schools should spend their time (and technology budgets) elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My third piece of advice \u2013 and the one that might get me the most angry emails from teachers \u2013 is that teachers should foless on warning students about the shortcomings of generative AI than figuring out what the technology does well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, many schools tried to scare students away from using AI by telling them that tools like ChatGPT are unreliable, prone to spitting out nonsensical answers and generic-sounding prose. These criticisms, while true of early AI chatbots, are less true of today\u2019s upgraded models, and clever students are figuring out how to get better results by giving the models more sophisticated prompts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result, students at many schools are racing ahead of their instructors when it comes to understanding what generative AI can do, if used correctly. And the warnings about flawed AI systems issued last year may ring hollow this year, now that GPT-4 is capable of getting passing grades at Harvard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alex Kotran, the chief executive of the AI Education Project, a nonprofit that helps schools adopt AI, told me that teachers needed to spend time using generative AI themselves to appreciate how useful it could be \u2013 and how quickly it\u2019s improving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor most people, ChatGPT is still a party trick,\u201d he said.\u201cIf you don\u2019t really appreciate how profound of a tool this is, you\u2019re not going to take all the other steps that are going to be required.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are resources for educators who want to bone up on AI in a hurry. Kotran\u2019s organization has a number of AI-focused lesson plans available for teachers, as does the International Society for Technology in Education. Some teachers have also begun assembling recommendations for their peers, such as a website made by faculty at Gettysburg College that provides practical advice on generative AI for professors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my experience, though, there is no substitute for hands-on experience. So I\u2019d advise teachers to start experimenting with ChatGPT and other generative AI tools themselves, with the goal of getting as fluent in the technology as many of their students already are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My last piece of advice for schools that are flummoxed by generative AI is this: Treat this year \u2013 the first full academic year of the post-ChatGPT era \u2013 as a learning experience, and don\u2019t expect to get everything right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many ways AI could reshape the classroom. Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, thinks the technology will lead more teachers to adopt a\u201cflipped classroom\u201d \u2013 having students learn material outside of class, and practice it in class \u2013 which has the advantage of being more resistant to AI cheating. Other educators I spoke with said they were experimenting with turning generative AI into a classroom collaborator, or a way for students to practice their skills at home with the help of a personalized AI tutor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of these experiments won\u2019t work. Some will. That\u2019s OK. We\u2019re all still adjusting to this strange new technology in our midst, and the occasional stumble is to be expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But students need guidance when it comes to generative AI, and schools that treat it as a passing fad \u2013 or an enemy to be vanquished \u2013 will miss an opportunity to help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of stuff\u2019s going to break,\u201d Mollick said.\u201cAnd so we have to decide what we\u2019re doing, rather than fighting a retreat against the AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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