Is ChatGPT a Friend or foe?

People will always find ways to take shortcuts around hard work
re write The arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ... may signal the end of writing assignments altogether — and maybe even the end of writing as a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill
The bottom line: Students who use ChatGPT to slack off do so at their own peril — but there's educational potential here too

The algorithm for ChatGPT is beautifully simplistic. As we speak people are working on algorithms to detect it's use. It won't be long before the likes to Turnitin catch up.

The enterprising student won't just copy/paste ChatGPT's output though. I was genuinely impressed at how well ChatGPT was able to write essays on semi-obscure molecular biology topics. If I was still at university, I'd be using it to cut out a lot of the initial research.

As an educator I would ask why? What is the point? If you do that, you are simply wasting your time and the time of the lecturer who has to mark it. You don't do essays and assignments for the lecturer. You do it for you. You do it to learn. And by cheating, the only person who loses out is you. Sure, you get a piece of paper with a degree written on it, but there will be a point at which you get called out and are left wanting.

I would say to students thinking of using ChatGPT for the purposes of cheating to not bother with university and do something else instead.

Part of the problem is that a lot of students see their education in solely instrumental terms, which means that they aren't as invested as some others in the nuts and bolts of doing things to improve, education as a gradual, cumulative experience, loving the subject. I think this move towards instrumentality has been a driver towards cheating. I see it a lot in my department.

But equally, given that students are coming out of a school based education system where they have little or no agency over their learning has anyone at university level ever thought to actually explain to their students that their learning and degree is about them, not the university? I do it with my A-level students and they get it!

Well, yes. routinely. But many don't care - especially if it's finance or econ related. They want a bit of paper to let them make lots of money in a bank. I have around 200 students under my advising purview, I think about 10-20% of them take their discipline seriously in the same way my philosophy cohort did when I was reading for my undergraduate degree.. The vast, vast majority come in to complain about the degree and lament that they're just doing it to get a great gig at a bank. With that attitude, I am not surprised to see so much cheating.

In my experience, much of it is discipline dependent. I don't think you see as much of the instrumentality mindset in the humanities, for what are probably obvious reasons.

In fairness to them its not like they have a choice in getting a degree - few do if you dont want to do manual labour or the like. A degree being as required as your gcse's. With that in mind, its hard to fault them for treating it like high schoolers, especially when they (nominally at least) have to pay for it

People will always find ways to take shortcuts around hard work
re write The arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ... may signal the end of writing assignments altogether — and maybe even the end of writing as a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill
The bottom line: Students who use ChatGPT to slack off do so at their own peril — but there's educational potential here too