Unit 2 Portfolio
Research question: How does AI impact our ability to do things, including writing? Is it a good thing that more and more types of AI are being developed, or are there too many cons?
I think that this question raises a lot of points of discussion. AI has been developed to help society thrive; we have machines doing things for us to make our lives easier. One example of a form of AI that’s taken the world by storm is ChatGPT – a software produced by OpenAI. ChatGPT is an AI system that can do lots of things – ranging from writing essays and poetry to solving complex mathematical problems. You can ask AI to write on literally any topic, and it will. Tasks that take a while can be reduced to mere minutes – according to a New York Times article, special education teacher Eli Snyder states, “What used to take me an hour now takes me five minutes”. This, obviously, rises concerns with teachers and professors around the globe – students can use this software to do their homework for them. Due to its ever-increasing popularity, universities are already putting in place rules that ban the use of ChatGPT for homework or exam help. On a BBC video about the software, a comment from a math teacher claims that ChatGPT was able to solve “a number of calculus I & II application problems involving integrations and differentiation” with “a beautifully detailed solution for each question with correct notation”. They then claimed to have this worry them, since students can use this software to do their homework. In the near future, there will most likely be more advanced forms of ChatGPT to do our everyday activities for us. The fact that one program can produce thousands of words of writing in a matter of seconds can excite students and terrify professors.
In my opinion, I think that the development of AI to help us with our writing and other activities is both a good thing and a bad thing. In some cases, it really helps us – tasks that take us hours to do is now reduced to only minutes. If we need detailed help on something and we don’t have time to click through links on Google, we can simply ask ChatGPT or other forms of AI the question and they can provide us with a detailed answer. I certainly would like to have this level of convenience everywhere I go. However, I do understand the concern that many people raise. Possibly the biggest opposition comes from teachers and professors – having such an easy tool at students’ fingertips, one can’t help but worry that they’ll use this and other software to complete their assignments, typically for writing essays. Writing essays can be a time-consuming and brain-frying process, so students might look towards the easy way out here – ChatGPT.
Take a look at this video showcasing some of ChatGPT’s unnervingly quick responses to complex requests. The user asks the AI to produce a complex set of code, and within seconds the bot had a fully correct answer. Learning this for the first time, it was incredibly hard to wrap my head around. I played around with ChatGPT myself and it’s insane at how humanlike it is, being able to converse with you as if it were a human itself. Since learning of its capabilities I’ve used ChatGPT to help understand some assignments that the professor didn’t explain well, and to my surprise it’s been extremely helpful.
As one of our tasks in this unit was to pitch our research questions to an intended audience, I decided to ask three of my close friends what they thought about ChatGPT and the overall increase in AI potential, as well as how they felt about AI’s capabilities with writing. I decided to pitch this question towards people of my generation since I feel that AI will affect my generation the most – we use technology more than the older generation, so I felt it would be interesting to see how different people thought of it. As expected, all three came up with similar responses. With a bot as advanced as ChatGPT, writing becomes easier than ever – we can have it produce walls and walls of coherent text just from a simple phrase. As expected, this does cause some worry from teachers and professors across the globe – students can use this free software to write their papers for them – all it takes is for them to sign up for an OpenAI account, and then bam – access to one of the most advanced pieces of technology the world has ever seen.
The increasing power of AI has many benefits. I’ve used ChatGPT to help me with certain things in the past, and it has done a well enough job doing so. Of course, it’s not foolproof and will produce some mistakes here and there, but for the most part I would call it reliable. I think that AI can be incredibly helpful with writing – as stated, ChatGPT was able to produce coherent lines of poetry from a simple request. To further this statement, I’ve asked ChatGPT to produce a 3-stanza poem on grief. Here is what it came up with within seconds:
It’s almost impossible to believe that there isn’t a human behind the screen here. I can definitely see why professors are terrified of this software’s evolution. English professors might have to implement some way of checking whether an essay or other piece of writing is authentic or from ChatGPT, if that’s even possible. Nonetheless, it seems nothing will stop the evolution of AI. It is helpful to humanity in so many different ways, ways that seem impossible coming from just a machine. I certainly am looking forward to seeing how AI software like ChatGPT will evolve, evolve in ways that has it produce even less mistakes than normal. AI has been an incredible source of evolution material for writing, and it will only continue to grow as time goes on.
Sources:
I have barley used ChatGPT but throughly enjoy all it has to offer and can see your point on how professors worry about it many of my teachers have brought it up in the context that people are using it to do their homework.Overall though your thesis was clearly and your sources provided great evidence and resources to back up your point.-Taylor Chen
ReplyDeleteAlex, I really like this topic, as it is very applicable to our lives as college students. I am interested as to why you chose this topic despite getting more engagement on another question when you shared your potential questions with your close friends. I love that you seamlessly included the video of the AI responding to questions, as it was really fascinating to see it generate answers so quickly. I also really liked that you included a screenshot of you using the platform because I think it added another visual component to your project. -Lauren
ReplyDeleteHey, its really cool to see how your piece has evolved since your draft post. I personally use ChatGPT a bit, mostly to come up with practice problems relevant to the classes I'm taking, but never to do actual classwork. I can see why professors are beginning to get worried about the implications the AI imposes. -Max
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