AI chatbots like ChatGPT have taken education by storm, and schools and colleges have been caught off-guard. Students, and even some educators, have embraced this new technology with enthusiasm, but it’s still the Wild West out there.
So if you’re thinking of using ChatGPT (or something like it), in your new semester or year of study, there are some essential things you should know to avoid gettig into serious trouble, or simply doing more harm than good to your own educational journey.
7It’s a Tool, Not a Shortcut
It’s important to rememberwhyyou’re studying in the first place. Many college students are motivated by the end-goal. I.e. getting a degree so that it will unlock opportunities for you later in life. However, that piece of paper is meant to be symbolic of the knowledge, skills, and competencies you’ve developed during your studies.
While a tool like ChatGPT can really supercharge your learning if you use it right, if youmisuseit you’ll end up learning nothing and gaining no skills or competencies of your own. Even with a degree under the belt, it’s very hard to start a career. Doing that with a degree you didn’t earn and a total lack of preparation will just result in disaster.
6Your Professors Will Notice Lazy AI Work
WhileAI detection toolsdon’t work, and realistically can’t ever work as AI output becomes truly indistinguishable from real human writing, you may feel pretty confident getting an all-clear from these tools when running generated text through them.
However, these AI text generation bots aren’t yet sophisticated enough to create anything more than mediocre D-grade work at the college level. Your professor might not know for sure that your work was generated by an AI, but they will know it’s of middling quality and contains no original thought. While they might not be able to prove you didn’t write the work yourself, that doesn’t prevent them from giving you the grade that lazy work deserves.
5Plagiarism Policies May Include AI Use
While colleges have been slow to respond to ChatGPT suddenly dropping in on them, official policies around academic dishonesty and conduct are being updated across the world. They know about AI, they’ve used it, evaluated it, and have put guidelines into place.
This means that if you use AI in a way that goes against the policy, and they can prove it somehow, you’ll be in hot water. That said, most institutions recognize that generative AI is here to stay and that it will be part of the real-world working environment for you after graduation.
So, in most cases, AI use isn’t being banned, it’s just being regulated. This usually means there’s a list of things you are allowed to use ChatGPT or other similar tools for, and rules on when and where you need to disclose it. Follow these rules to the letter and you’re going to be just fine.
4ChatGPT Can Be Wrong (Confidently So)
All AI chatbots suffer from “hallucinations” where the bot will confidently make up facts that aren’t true. Because the chatbot is articulate and convincing, you might simply accept that what it says is true, because you don’t have the expertise to evaluate what it tells you.
Tools like ChatGPT are most useful in the hands of someone who is already a subject expert, because they can usually sniff out mistakes or reasoning errors. If you don’t actually know anything about the subject, you’re likely to get burned by this issue. This is why you should double-check every factual statement the chatbot makes. This is actually an excellent way to build your own expertise, because critically engaging with a text is exactly the sort of intellectual exercise that turns you into an expert.
3It’s Great for Brainstorming, Not Copy-Pasting
As a writer, I use ChatGPT as a way to boost my productivity, but not in the way you might think. I don’t use the bot to actually write anything for me, but instead I use it as a brainstorming tool. The hardest part of my job isn’t the actual writing bit. I can do that better and faster than ChatGPT any day of the week, given that I would effectively have to edit and rewrite all of its output before being happy with it anyway. It would take more time, not less!
No, instead the best thing about ChatGPT is that you can use it as an endless idea generator. You can engage in a back-and-forth with it to come up with ideas, then explore those ideas and drill down into the structures of arguments, or what issues should be included in the discussion. It’s also an awesome tool to get instant editorial feedback.
This means you can improve your grades not by having ChatGPT do the work for you, but by having it collaborate with you to prepare a plan, and then give feedback on your drafts to polish it up. This is the best of both worlds, because you’ve done the mental work expected of you, and you’ll learn through the feedback loop as you polish your work.
2You Can Use It to Understand, Not Just Generate
The best way to really understand a topic isn’t to simply read a textbook or attend a lecture. It’s when you engage in a dialogue with someone else, and wrestle with those ideas. This is why it’s valuable to have debates even with other students on the same level as you, but also with experts.
It’s not just about absorbing facts, education in a field is meant to help you learn how to think like someone from that field. Lawyers, scientists, and other professionals have a particular way of looking at the world that suits the needs of the professions. you’re able to learn all the facts you want about the human body, but that doesn’t make you a doctor. Thinking like a doctor and applying that knowledge within a specific framework is what being a doctor really is.
Something like ChatGPT can’t replace having this experience with real humans, but it can certainly augment and simulate it. You can use it to build your debating skills and have it challenge you. It might be helpful to learn how to makeChatGPT personas, such as telling ChatGPT that it should act like an architect or an anthropologist, depending on your needs.
1It Won’t Replace Your Sources or Citations
You can’t cite generative AI as a source in your work ever. Mainly because it can’t be trusted not to make up facts. This isn’t just true for ChatGPT or AI chatbots specifically, but any service that generates answers using AI. For example, the AI Overviews at the top of some Google searches cannot be used as a source, as it can also just make stuff up.
The best strategy here is to ask the bot to provide the sources for its facts and then read those sources yourself to verify that it’s telling the truth. Then you should citethosesources, assuming they meet the quality criteria set out in your course.
One of the most important skills that any student should learn today is how to use AI tools effectively to make them more productive, more knowledgeable, and more competent. You can use the AI to support you while you spend more time doing things that have the biggest impact on your learning.
Just be careful that you don’t lean on these tools so much that you come out less smart than you went in!
