ChatGPT creates digital divide

By Morgen Dozier Staff Writer

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence bot created by OpenAI. Since its creation in November of 2022 it has gained traction on the internet and in classrooms around America.

Some English teachers worry about the effect that ChatGPT might have on their classes since AI is able to create a convincing essay in mere seconds with only a few keywords. However, other teachers welcome the change as they look for more positives to this new piece of technology.

“I think that you’ll have students who use it as a means of not having to actually think critically, which in the end is just hurting themselves,” English 3 teacher Abby Wyllie said. “If your goal is to get educated and to glean an education out of being here every day, then you’ll do the things that actually mean you receive that education. But if you don’t want that, then people are going to learn how to cut corners in any way, shape or form.”

Because of its vast capabilities, English teacher Kimberly Villegas is curious to see how it might be used for good.

Villegas compared ChatGPT to math classes using ti-90 calculators after previously using pen and paper for calculations.

“It’s absolutely fascinating. There’s so much power there, it’s a lot to wrap your head around,” said Villegas, who has taught English for 16 years.

ChatGPT is already being used in many occupations such as computer programming, customer services, human resources and journalism.

Of course it is unlikely that AI will completely take over these jobs. But humans might utilize a program like ChatGPT to increase their efficiency and workload in everyday life.

Villegas said she never thought of the possibility of Artificial Intelligence being able to create essays, but she welcomes the change.

“It already is an extremely useful and helpful tool in the work world and in people’s day-to-day life,” Villegas said.

“It does a really good job of giving a voice – a written voice – to people who maybe struggle with effective communication through the written word, or to people who are not strong writers, but maybe they can verbally communicate really great ideas. But I think that it’s only going to be effectively used, like to the degree that teachers are willing to change the way that they approach their classroom.”

Villegas has already started to use ChatGPT in her classroom to help her students proofread and revise their essays. But the students’ reactions are always mixed.

“I would say there have been plenty of assignments where I’ve said, ‘OK, we’ll try putting it through ChatGPT and see what it gets,” Villegas said. “‘Do you like it? Is it good enough to submit or not?’ And then I have students who are very strong writers and they are like, ‘Oh, it’s absolutely garbage.’ Well, it’s not, it’s not absolute garbage if you’re a weak writer or even an average writer.”

Senior Gbemisola Olaoya embraces the challenge ChatGPT brings. Olaoya writes poetry then puts it into ChatGPT to analyze it. She wants to make sure that it flows the way she wants it to. The AI will then proofread her poem and tell her what it thinks will work.

“Anything in excess is wrong, but I feel like if you’re using ChatGPT in the right way, you’re using it in order to add to your knowledge rather than using it to write an essay,” said Olaoya

Although students may think that using an AI platform to write their essay is an easy way to get a 100, not everything the AI spits out may be correct information. The sentence structure is very similar, and the way that an argument is presented is straightforward. It doesn’t give specifics unless a student asks for it. And it tends to show both sides of an issue equally, which is not ideal if you are preparing for a debate or writing an argumentative paper.

“The other thing that it does is it makes up quotes,” Villegas said. “If you say you need to include quotes and you give it things to quote from, it pretends that it has quotes from those things. But the thing in the quote marks isn’t from the article that it says that it’s referencing. It just makes up a quote that sounds good and then puts quote marks around it.”

ChatGPT is not going anywhere anytime soon. The district will be holding classes for English teachers over the summer to better help them understand and differentiate the work of ChatGPT to the work of a regular high school student.

“I mean, it’s coming no matter what,” Wyllie said. “I think that technology continues to evolve and advance. You can either fight against it or you can embrace it and use it to its full potential.”