ChatGPT

Note: This slide deck is a work in progress and will continue to be updated as new ChatGPT resources, research, and ideas are published.

Published January 2023 | Updated March 2023

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The appearance of a computer programme that can produce texts that could seemingly be written by a human has caused quite a stir, particularly in the education community. Early on, widely shared examples presented automatically produced essays that were (if not brilliant) good enough to pass some exams.

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Imagine a private tutor that never gets tired, has access to massive amounts of data and is free for everyone. In 1966, Stanford philosophy professor Patrick Suppes did just that when he made this prediction: One day, computer technology would evolve so that “millions of schoolchildren” would have access to a personal tutor. He said the conditions would be just like the young prince Alexander the Great being tutored by Aristotle.

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It doesn’t take much to get ChatGPT to make a factual mistake. My son is doing a report on U.S. presidents, so I figured I’d help him out by looking up a few biographies. I tried asking for a list of books about Abraham Lincoln and it did a pretty good job.

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OpenAI is making headlines again with its latest viral use of artificial intelligence. But what is ChatGPT and how does it work?

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The maker of ChatGPT is trying to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework.

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To harness the potential and avert the risks of OpenAI’s new chat bot, academics should think a few years out, invite students into the conversation and—most of all—experiment, not panic.

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So how good is it? Well, it’s definitely not perfect – spend some time on Twitter and you’ll find a bunch of amusing, and also some really concerning, examples of what it gets wrong and how it can reproduce bias.

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