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A student does homework. Can artificial intelligence help you with this?
Sophie ReinhardtEditor Politics
Did the student really write this study paper, or is there a computer program behind it? Did the student solve the homework herself or did the chatbot GPT-3 do it? Schools and universities deal with these questions.
With good reason: programs that use artificial intelligence (AI) now write essays, check program codes for errors or answer knowledge questions. Blick knows that clever Swiss students use GPT-3 to get help.
New form of ghostwriting
The German scientist Robert Lepenies (38) recently warned that GPT-3 makes many forms of testing “unthinkable from today”. Because the program generates texts that are qualitatively indistinguishable from the work of students.
This has not escaped the notice of the Swiss universities either. The problem at the moment is that these texts cannot be unmasked with conventional tools, the ETH said on request. “Texts written by an AI are not plagiarism, but a new form of ghostwriting,” says ETH spokesman Markus Gross.
Different strategies
How do I handle this? There is no consensus on this. At the University of Bern, strategies are currently being examined to uncover performance controls generated by artificial intelligence. In addition, they want to sensitize members of the university to the topic. The University of Lucerne wants to introduce new anti-plagiarism software in spring. Others advocate conducting certain exams only on site and by hand or orally.
Beat Schwendimann, head of the pedagogical office of the umbrella organization of teachers (LCH), recently called for a fundamental discussion about the meaning and purpose of homework: because if you can’t check who did it – what’s the point?
Program invents sources
The Swiss AI expert Kevin Schawinski (41) says that it can hardly be prevented that students and schoolchildren use such programs: “It would therefore make more sense to sensitize them to how to deal with them,” says the CEO of the AI – Start-ups Modulos.
He reminds that GPT, for example, does not have a real understanding. «The model was trained with the aim of predicting the next words. If you use this model again and again after each word, you get sentences or larger pieces of text.»
He himself has repeatedly commissioned the language program to write scientific texts. It’s still error-prone. In this way, it would know that references to this type of text were mandatory. “GTP partly invented this entirely. Sometimes they were right.”
According to Schawinski, the improvement of such AI language programs is developing at breakneck speed. “It is therefore very difficult to predict what they will be able to do in the near future.”
New Yoker schools ban ChatGPT
The first international educational institutions have already reacted to the development. In Australia, universities have responded by declaring that using artificial intelligence is considered cheating. According to reports in the “Guardian”, some universities are also planning to have exams written more often with paper and pen instead of digitally in the future.
The New York City Department of Education blocks students from accessing ChatGPT over the public school network. This was necessary because of “concerns about negative effects on student learning,” it said in a statement.
The Swiss universities contacted don’t think much of such a ban because it’s easy to circumvent. At ETH, it is also pointed out that work is closely monitored and that there is “a focus on experimental data”. In addition, a degree also includes an oral defense of the work or other examinations. “At this point at the latest, it becomes clear whether the work was written by the student himself,” says Markus Gross from ETH. Artificial intelligence cannot be sent to the oral exam.
The Federal Council should deal with it
The topic is now also affecting Swiss politics: The green-liberal National Councilor and self-employed programmer Jörg Mäder (47) asked the Federal Council how the Federal Council assesses the effects of such AI programs on the Swiss education system. With such systems, a large field of opportunities and risks unfolds, which it is important to keep in mind, says Mäder.
The company Open AI, which is behind the ghostwriting program, has already commented on the problem. In a statement, she says that she wants to work on solutions together with educators. “We do not want ChatGPT to be used in schools or anywhere else for deceptive purposes,” it said.