Cheat GPT Sequoia staff express concern over language models in classrooms

BY ADAM TRINKLEIN & THOMAS JETT Staff Reporters

The end of homework, the end of internet search, the beginning of a new era, artificial intelligence is sending ripples, waves, and tsunamis through every sector. New AI language model Chat GPT has been all the buzz in the last few months since its inception.

This language model was developed by Open AI and launched in November of 2022. It had already amassed a million users shocked and wowed by the capabilities of a novel chat bot in the span of just five days. It can create jokes, give advice, answer questions, write essays, imitate styles of speech, and much more. Chat GPT has allowed for some of the most convincing text generation of any large language model to date. Concern about the capabilities of this AI have swept far and wide. “The College Essay is Dead,” wrote Stephen Marche from The Atlantic. Google reportedly issued a “code red” alert within the company over Chat GPT’s capability to upend search engines; after all, who would choose to sift through links and ads for information, when they could get it directly and concisely from a chat bot?

At Sequoia High School, Chat GPT has had an impact already. Thirty-two out of seventysix students surveyed in a recent poll had heard of Chat GPT. Three of those students admitted to using it to cheat on school assignments. Chat GPT’s launch has already rippled out to Sequoia’s English teachers.

“I’ve watched a student sign in to an account and looked at how it worked, and it can generate an essay very quickly, and it is alarming, ” IB English teacher Ms. Rutigliano said.

Anxiety about using Chat GPT to cheat on school work is running high, while new technology like phones have always been an issue for teachers, trying to automate creativity is new.

“My biggest concern as a teacher is always just how to get my students to learn as much as possible and how to get them to think critically. In order to do that, they need to do their own thinking” IB English teacher Emily DeVoe said.

The anxiety about the model is lowered by a closer look at Chat GPT, and how the language models output is less impressive than it first seems. Because it can’t actually form its own opinion or cite a source, its products can’t satisfy the expectations of teachers.

“I was terrified, I gave it an IB prompt and in about three seconds, it generated a five paragraph essay that outwardly didn’t have any issues, but then I looked at it and all the quotes were fabricated.” DeVoe said

Most people who have played with the language model come to the same conclusion about its limited abilities. Because of the AI’s lack of opinion and personality, the average person, or an application like GPT zero, can see through writing by the AI.

“Essays written by chat GPT are basic level stuff, if someone actually uses chat GPT by itself and turns it in, it’s not going to be a good essay and is easy to detect.” Sophomore Cade Miller said.

There are potentially good uses for AI still, it can be used to accelerate writing or get students, but it can’t be expected to write with depth. how

“I think that if you use it correctly, it can make your writing better. It’s not a high depth analysis of whatever you’re writing about, but it’s a good foundation.” sophomore Cade Miller said.

DeVoe also points out that like other methods of cheating, Chat GPT is only getting in the way of students actually learning.

“It’s very easy to follow these shiny sparkly shortcuts that aren’t actually helpful. I’ve seen this with summaries of texts that we read in class, which seems like it’s a shortcut at the time but it’s just surface level regurgitation” DeVoe said.

It’s hard to estimate the future impact of Chat GPT on student writing, but right now it isn’t as threatening as it first seems. The limits of the application mean that a forward thinking school shouldn’t need to be worried about it more than other issues like plagiarism.

“There are so many other resources that are already used for cheating, that the addition of one extra seems not very relevant,” a sophomore said.

It’s up to students to choose to be honest and not use the tools available to them for cheating. While Chat GPT doesn’t seem like an issue in its current form, it is an extension of the issue that is cheating for schools.

“If you’re going to cheat, we’re at that moral part where cheating is cheating and that’s up to the person,” a sophomore said.