‘A BIT TERRIFYING’

Is ChatGPT just

BY GABBY JIMENEZ @gvjimenezz

Imagine you have an art history essay on Baroque era paintings due at midnight. It’s 11:30 p.m., and the deadline is quickly approaching. What if you could get your computer to write the essay for you in seconds?

With ChatGPT, that’s now a reality.

ChatGPT, which stands for chat generative pre-trained transformer, is an artificial intelligence chatbot created by the company OpenAI that, provided with a short prompt, can write and produce images at will. The program was launched in late November 2022, and, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, had one million users within five days of its release.

New York City’s Department of Education banned ChatGPT from school devices and networks at the beginning of the year due to fears of cheating, NBC reported. Several schools and universities around the world have followed suit, while others are actively embracing the new technology.

LSU cybersecurity professor Golden Richard said he uses ChatGPT in class to demonstrate how far AI has come, but he doesn’t have any interest in incorporating it into his curriculum.

“I don’t think things like ChatGPT are going to push Stephen King aside, because it’s not clear that they have the depth of creativity that humans have…But in terms of like, you know, English composition… they’re generally accurate, and it’s something that students can simply just turn in,” Richard said. “And that’s a little bit terrifying.”

Richard said ChatGPT works by “scraping the internet” for data and looking for patterns that enables them to create text and images that mimic human