Students Are Using AI To Write All Of Their School Papers

A new AI program called ChatGPT is being used to write school essays, though scientists say it cannot form opinions.

By Britta DeVore | Updated

AI

While artificial intelligence may cause some alarm for the future of mankind, it would seem that it’s still not quite there when it comes to writing a compelling college essay. According to The Business Insider, college professors are snuffing out the rumor that AI will devastate a fair grading system with the use of the recently launched chatbot, ChatGPT. Despite its best efforts, new reports are saying that while the bot can crank out a document from the perspective of a human, it can’t form its own opinion, only listing arguments from other sources.

Speaking about the newest AI worry, Pennsylvania State University English professor, Stuart Selber, told The Business Insider that the hype surrounding similar programs including “Word, Wikipedia, and the Internet in general,” have ebbed and flowed over the last few decades with nothing bringing down the educational system as we know it. “I’m not a huge fan of the gloom and doom,” the professor said, weighing his opinion that worries surrounding ChatGPT will eventually fade out. He added that although the AI presents writing that’s well put together “in an abstract way,” it lacks a certain humanity, making it a walking red flag for a red pen and an “F” grade. 

artificial intelligence

If you’ve seen any of the content coming from ChatGPT, you’ll know that the AI dazzles, penning everything from coding to television scripts and, of course, collegiate-level essays. As humans, we love to drum up anxiety for just about anything, and since ChatGPT dropped in late November, we’ve done nothing but that. And, while many were throwing in their two cents, claiming that this would be the end of higher education as we know it, Professor Selber and others like him are here to say that this simply isn’t true.

But, that isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have fear of what the future holds for humans vs. machines. As we said, we love feeding the anxiety! If you’ve been paying attention to our reports of similar AI programming, you’ll know that science and technology have been making major headway with new and impressive forms of robotic intelligence. 

While we’re doing cute things with robots and other forms of AI, like giving them food delivery jobs that they take *very* seriously and allowing us to better picture what deceased celebrities would look like now, the possibility of mankind ending up in a Battlestar Galactica-esque situation is still very possible. Scientists have previously said that there’s always a chance that artificial intelligence could overtake humanity’s brain power, and deem us a threat to existence, therefore bringing an end to the human race. Think we’re paranoid? We are.

Although we certainly aren’t there yet, let this article be a word of warning to the college students out there – don’t let AI write your papers for you! From what we’ve gathered from Professor Selber and several of his peers, it sounds as though ChatGPT just isn’t as convincing as it seems and, in the end, you will be found out. Instead, take it down a notch and cheat the old-fashioned way with CliffsNotes. As a bonus, you won’t owe the robot overlords as much when they take over.