AIBU or do I need to "Get with the times"?

[NotTodaySatanIHavePMS]

DH has just downloaded Chat GBT (an artificial intelligence bot) onto 14 year old DSC's laptop because it will help 'give them ideas' for essays.

WTF? Am I being really old fashioned? Surely if you need ideas for your essay you read a bloody book.

Or have things really 'moved on' as DH insists and this is how all the kids study these days? Rather than do any critical thinking they just get spoon fed the answers by AI?

I'm really shocked he thinks this is okay. It feels akin to plagiarism to me.

Why wouldn't you want your kid to use the most exciting technology?

People said the same shite about the calculator, and the computer, and all that and you know what? We still create kids with critical thinking skills who create the next amazing thing.

Stop being an old fart.

I think you need to be wary of plagiarism tbh, if all the kids start using it it’ll be pretty easy to spot…

i Wouldn’t encourage this at all.
We have banned this.

It's a great way to ensure your children don't learn to think and create for themselves.

You should probably spend more time using it first to check wether it’s giving the answers or making suggestions, rather than just deciding that not a book = bad.

I'm torn. The odd idea, yes. Relying on it? Nope. Hard to police once it's there.

Read a book??

You Do need to get with the times!

Ask the school whether this is allowed? I would imagine it’s something they’ve thought about.

I think they definitely do need to learn about AI, how to use it, its potential and limitations etc. But under the heading of “helping write essays”? No.

You can do both!
I still nag my kids to read a book and we're all fascinated by chatgpt.

You can tell it things like "I've been asked to write a 250 word essay on the post-Roman era in Great Britain, roughly 400-600 AD. Which aspects do you think I should focus on?"

Then ask more questions stemming from its answers.

Then ask it for sources. Ask it to recommend books & articles that will best provide background information and details. In some cases, the AI will be able to feed you chunks of the recommended texts, so you don't need to find & read the whole opus.

Remember ALWAYS that AIs can get stuff very, very wrong! Trying to catch it out is a worthwhile exercise and, for a student, a valuable learning experience.

I've read a few things generated by chatGTP and I can always tell. It's clever yes, but it's not advanced enough (yet?) to fool a teacher I wouldn't have thought.

Even if it was, surely this comes under the heading of "cheating"

I wouldn't be encouraging this.
Have some fun with it, yes. Use it for homework, hard no.

Lots of people are using this at work now

Fine for kids getting to grips with tech but using it to become lazy thinkers, nope.

This! ChatGPT is great for gathering ideas and sources.

If you're not using ChatGPT or similar in your office job or school then you're not working efficiently.

I use it throughout the day, for writing responses to boring emails; reformatting and extracting data; summarising text; outputting outlines of scripts & boiler plate code etc.

I probably now save two hours a day of work for $24/month

The lack of engagement/ learning aside, chat gpt is becoming less and less accurate as more individuals feed it their code. They will almost certainly be generating some inaccurate essay titles and ideas. I also can’t see any educational institutions being okay with this so no I wouldn’t be encouraging my child. And I’m not a Luddite, my partner works in tech and we have most devices going etc - just think it’s a bad idea all around!

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/chatgpt-response-quality-decline#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20Chat%20GPT%2D4,from%20March%20to%20June%202023.&text=In%20recent%20months%20there%20has,the%20quality%20of%20ChatGPT%20responses.

Teachers can tell when an essay has been written by AI. I read three identical essays last year. Not very good ones, either. Posed the question to ChatGTP. And there was the answer.

Hope that helps.

A person on DS’s degree course just got kicked out of university for using ChatGPT

Using it or relying on it?

https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/JCQ-AI-Use-in-Assessments-Protecting-the-Integrity-of-Qualifications.pdf

The government has issued this advice to schools and colleges about the use of AI chat bots in assessments. The consequences for misusing it for GCSE and A-Level assessments are very serious - for candidates and for exam centres.

Just no.

If you need ideas to get started, there's Google! Or better, Google Scholar.

ChatGPT makes up references (maybe not all of them, but some).

Not referencing is a very poor habit to get into.