HERSTORY MONTH

March is officially Women’s History Month

by Lydia Weed

Design

by Abbi Lovins

In 1987, president Jimmy Carter declared the month of March to be dedicated to recognizing the historical impact and contributions of women around the country.

Pediatrician, town historian and North alumni Dr. Tami Stone Iorio shares the history behind some of the women that have broken barriers in Columbus.

“Jeanne Lewellen Norbeck was a 1929 graduate of Columbus High School,” Iorio said. “In 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she volunteered to join the military and become one of the first female test pilots in U.S. history. Over 25,000 women volunteered to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and Jeanne was one of only 1,074 to successfully complete the training.”

Today, Bartholomew County has many efforts to highlight active women in the community, including The Republic’s Woman of the Year. Their new Women to Watch magazine will debut in June.

For organizations such as the Heritage Fund, giving back to women is a priority. Their program, called Women’s Giving Circle, works to support local women and their families, as well as those in leadership positions and those in crisis. They create awareness for issues that impact women everywhere.

Kristen Munn, a member of the Heritage fund, explains how this organization targets women in need.

“In addition to offering a variety of scholarship opportunities, we also fund an annual leadership award for a woman in the community seeking to enhance her leadership skills for the purpose of using their talents and giving back locally,” Munn said. “We have supported numerous organizations and programs serving women in the community.”

According to their Bartholomew County Report Card for Women, the local level of poverty is 15.2 percent for women, while men make up 12.6 percent Bartholomew County ranks tenth among the highest cost for childcare in Indiana. Despite these struggles, 51.9 percent of local voters are women. Forty-nine percent of board seats across local nonprofits are held by women. Ninety-three percent of women in Bartholomew County earned a high school diploma.

The impact of women’s history month

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8 Women's History Week across the country.

Every Women's History Month has a theme. The 2023 Women's History Month theme is Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.

In March of 1987, Congress declared March Women's History Month has impacted all aspects of the community, especially in schools. Senior Avery Stults discusses what Women’s History Month means to her.

“To me, Women’s History Month is a commemoration of how women have contributed to the history of our country. [It] shows the progress in how far we’ve come [in] equality for everyone,” Stults said.

History Of Women

Source: womensday.com

Misuse of ChatGPT and other AI has consequences that go far beyond the classroom

By now, the potential of using ChatGPT to cheat on assignments is well-known; as students, it’s one of the most obvious applications of this trailblazing technology. There have been a range of reactions from both students and teachers, with some embracing it as a way to make work more efficient and others remaining skeptical about the ethics of using it. After all, it can be difficult to separate where the user’s creative input ends and the AI’s language output algorithm begins. But when we consider the potential impact of ChatGPT and other AI models on the world as a whole, using it to do APUSH homework begins to look like child’s play.

Think about the explosion of fake news and online misinformation that has plagued the internet over the past few years. Behind every spurious article about aliens or COVID-19 on your grandma’s Facebook feed is a human writer. Their output might not always be the most professional, but it doesn’t need to be; as long as it keeps getting views, the fake media keeps getting profits. Compared to ChatGPT, that human writer is infinitely less efficient. ChatGPT could write a better article in seconds for free. The incentive to spread misinformation increases all the more.

Non-fiction writing is not the only field that could be turned on its head by ChatGPT. The literary scene is already beginning to feel its effects. While the AI hasn’t yet advanced far enough to put out long works such as novels, it has a talent for writing short-form fiction. Aspiring writers already face steep odds to get their work published, but ChatGPT is making that even harder. Consider the case of Clarkesworld, a literary magazine that is influential in the field of science fiction. It went from receiving around 50 submissions a month to over 500 in February 2023. Unable to sort the original work from ChatGPT’s yarns, the editors had to stop accepting submissions entirely. We can only imagine the impact on the publishing industry if this were to happen on a larger scale.

Even more ominous is the rapid development of image-generating AI models like DALL-E 2. It can create virtually any picture a user wants, although sometimes with surreal features like extra limbs. Closely related is deepfake technology, which does not generate images from scratch but projects certain features onto already existing pictures or videos. The possibilities for abuse here range from highly effective misinformation (making it look like a politician beat up a puppy) to life-destroying content (using it to create false compromising images of a person). This calls into question the wisdom of releasing potent AI tools like Chat-GPT and deepfake software to the public.

It is evident that technology, when it comes to cheating, will always continue advancing and will only be getting more realistic. Everyone has different motives on what they would use OpenAI for but does that mean everyone should have access to it? OpenAI contains ways to make learning and creating much easier than it ever has been.

Technology advances and that affects our education with what the basic standard is set at. Computers, calculators, and other ways of learning have deeply impacted our education and can appear easier. OpenAI and other technology companies could make the average person's intelligence higher or could negatively impact our motivation to learn. If these technology companies made their prototypes available to the general public, what is stopping people from using it to cheat their way out of everyday responsibilities?

It could be harmful for young people’s education and ability to learn. In general the public already has access to the internet and other resources to make cheating easier, this would only further that issue.

However, the ability to be more creative and discover could be beneficial and have a positive impact in a variety of fields. Making things easier but in a more efficient way that can help lead to better things.

As the world of technology furthers and advances there will be more ways students will figure out ways to cheat. Even though OpenAI and ChatGPT aren’t necessarily bad tools, people can use them to their own personal disadvantage when it comes to learning. These technology companies are smart and are developing ways to make creating more efficient, however it could potentially take a toll on student’s ability to learn.