ChatGPT writes article appearing in scientific journal
A scientific journal has published an article on the dangers and possibilities of ChatGPT in education. And yes, it was written using ChatGPT.
The advent of ChatGPT is leading to a continuous stream of columns and articles written using the chat program, mostly dealing with its dangers.
The HOP interviewed the program shortly after its launch. The advent of ChatGPT may lead to plagiarism, the program itself acknowledged, "because it is difficult to determine whether a given piece of work was written by a human or a machine."
The authors of Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring Academic Integrity in the Era of ChatGPT demonstrate that. Until the concluding "discussion," almost the entire article is written by ChatGPT, except for the references and headings.
Made-up references
ChatGPT had all made-up references, which the authors replaced with real ones where necessary. But other than that, they did little other than provide "prompts" or topics to write about. Even the title is ChatGPT's own.
The British daily The Guardian reports that the reviewers, who are supposed to judge the quality of the article before it is posted, were fooled. This is not true, as it is clear in the article that it was written with the help of ChatGPT.
Above all, the article shows what the consequences could be for higher education and scientific research. “It's an arms race,” says one of the authors, professor Debby Cotton. “Technological developments are happening at lightning speed and universities will have a hard time keeping up.”
Equal opportunity
One of the other authors, biologist Reuben Shipway, sees advantages. ChatGPT may well be good for equality of opportunity, he suggests on Twitter. It could help non-native English speakers, students with certain learning difficulties, or people with functional limitations.
Previously, Nature reported that ChatGPT has been named co-author of an article four times. Some researchers believe the program can be a good tool, while some academic journals want to discourage its use.
The program works based on probabilities. It does not search for the truth but produces plausible answers to questions and assignments that users submit to it.
80 cheaters
Some 80 students have been caught cheating in Maastricht, writes university magazine Observant. They are second-year students who had to write programming code for a Computer Science Skills course. A total of 80 of more than a hundred students submitted exactly the same code, presumably obtained via ChatGPT.
Education is looking for solutions to overcome such fraud. Teachers are going to administer some exams manually again or require students to defend their work orally.
