Tech on the rise

JMU faculty prepare for ChatGPT’s arrival

By JAMES CROWLEY contributing writer

There’s a new internet tool that’s taken the academic world by storm by assisting students in cheating their way to good grades: ChatGPT, a revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) language model.

According to Open AI, the company that owns the language model, ChatGPT interacts in a conversational way in which it can answer follow-up questions, recognize its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests.

ChatGPT is a “sibling model” to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response that was introduced in February 2022, according to Open AI.

Based on a user’s first hand experience, ChatGPT is capable of providing someone with the answer to absolutely any question they ask.

Conor Daly, a junior finance major at JMU, demonstrated to The Breeze an experience he had with the language model. He asked ChatGPT to describe the meaning behind the painting “The Old Guitarist” by Pablo Picasso. Seconds later, it provided a 209-word, three-paragraph essay that described the themes and meanings the painting incorporates.

When someone needs to solve a multiplication or division equation, they can get a calculator, type in the numbers and have an answer in less than a second. Now, when someone needs to write an analysis of a novel, they can ask ChatGPT to write an analysis of the story and it’ll give them one in seconds. ChatGPT is basically like a calculator for writing.

If students need to complete a writing assignment on a topic they have no interest in, ChatGPT can get it done quickly.

JMU English professor Becky Childs said it seems there’s a variety of opinions amongst JMU English and writing professors on ChatGPT. Some seem to be very concerned about the effects it’ll have on the future curriculum, she said, while others are interested in what it may offer. Childs said that either way, writing professors have become aware of the new language model and are beginning to prepare for the emergence of it in their classrooms.

On Feb. 1, JMU’s Center for Faculty Innovation hosted a Zoom event for faculty members to come discuss the “promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence in higher education,” according to the events description.

Andreas Broscheid, a political science professor and the assistant director for career planning at the Center for Faculty Innovation and Dayna Henry, an associate professor of health sciences and the interim assistant director of the Scholarship Area at the Center for Faculty Innovation, hosted the event. About 20 faculty members attended, all from different areas and departments of the university.

During the discussion, several professors focused on how they can use the language model to their advantage.

“The JMU faculty has constantly had to adjust for new technology with the pandemic, and they never strayed away from moving forward then so we should be able to do the same with this new AI model,” Henry said. said the purpose of the event wasn’t only a discussion focused on the negative impact and fear of cheating associated with the new AI, but also the consideration of possible benefits.

Professors have had to adjust their way of teaching over the past few years with a primarily online teaching format on Canvas and Zoom. Now, this language model could be just as large of a transition for their teaching styles.

“I’ve thought about asking my students to use ChatGPT to ask it to answer test questions and analyze its response,” Henry said.

Henry and Broscheid said professors will need to rely on their creativity and willingness to see what can be done with this breakthrough new software.

They also said that as of right now, what seems most important to the university’s educators is an overwhelming amount of concern for students’ actual ability to learn. Writing is one of the most important skills that young people need to develop and enhance while in college but with ChatGPT readily available to any age. The professors in attendance of the Zoom it may take away from teenagers learning the ins and outs of English and hinder the development of critical thinking skills they said.

Alongside the concerns for student learning, there’s the obvious worry of cheating, they said. It was unanimously agreed upon during the Zoom that if use of ChatGPT for a writing assignment is detected, it’ll be considered cheating, therefore breaking the JMU Honor Code.

For now, those who participated in the Zoom said that they’re still very new to AI and ChatGPT and can’t implement it in their classrooms quite yet — its sudden appearance in November left them with little to no time to adjust for it. This leaves some with great concerns that students will use ChatGPT for cheating purposes this semester, they said.

As for next semester, the professors said they’re expecting themselves and JMU to be more prepared for ChatGPT’s prevalence, along with possibly using it to their advantage in the classroom.

Following the Zoom, Henry and Broscheid gave The Breeze insight on how faculty at JMU are feeling about ChatGPT. They

Broscheid and Henry also reported discussions on what role this software will play in the corporate world and the risk of this new technology replacing humans in the fields where writers have been essential, such as journalism, which led to the third major concern of JMU faculty: how students will handle AI becoming a possible replacement in the workforce.

“It takes our creativity and willingness to see what we can do with it,” Henry said.