Moody faculty share concerns, optimism about ChatGPT OK

Written and Illustrated by Logan Dubel

When the first handheld Texas Instruments calculator made its way into students’ hands in 1967, teachers held their breath. When Silicon Valley created Google in 1998, educators worried. However, when ChatGPT-3.5 launched in November, everyone’s jaws dropped.

Writing an essay, news story or persuasive speech all became possible through a single prompt, with varying rates of success. To many, something about this invention feels different.

For the Moody College of Communication’s School of Journalism and Media, ChatGPT challenges everything professors teach - originality, ethics and human impact.

Longtime instructor Diana Dawson said she first learned about the software at a faculty workshop before the end of the fall semester. While the veteran journalist said she left the meeting feeling uncertain about the software’s eventual capabilities, she knew her advice for students.

“My message was not going to be to lump it under academic dishonesty,” said Dawson, the founding director of the Moody Writing Support Program and an assistant professor of instruction. “But I was going to say, ‘My classes are designed to help develop your own craft of writing. So don’t cheat yourself. Don’t do yourself a disservice by taking a shortcut.’”

Dawson’s warning comes as a January survey from the online publication Intelligent shows that nearly one in three college students have turned to the chatbot when completing written assignments. While faculty may not have clear methods to spot student use of artificial intelligence, Dawson said that ChatGPT lacks the original brainpower students need.

“I have a lot of students who have a hard time doing what I call thinking around the edges of a story,” Dawson said. “I want to see students doing critical thinking about what belongs in a news story and what doesn’t… I would hate to see a dependence on something like this keep them from doing that.”

Still, Dawson admits that existing online tools increase accessibility for journalists, and that if used ethically, ChatGPT could do the same.

“When I was a reporter, I didn’t have Google, and that shocks students now. How could you even function as a reporter without Google? Well, we had books and maps that we had to use,” Dawson said. “(Google) has strengthened our ability to do reporting in many ways, and I think the key is that we don’t want to paint (ChatGPT) as one color right now because we really don’t know where it might be productive.”

Dawson said that the news should move us forward, but with ChatGPT behind the byline, that may not be possible. The current iteration of the chatbot feeds from datasets through September 2021, meaning that it lacks knowledge of facts or world events from the past year and a half and could mislead users with outdated information.

Still, ChatGPT marks only the beginning of AI’s entry into classrooms and media. OpenAI launched an updated version, GPT-4, in March, which surpasses its predecessor through image analysis. The refreshed chatbot remains unavailable to the general public but will undoubtedly raise eyebrows yet again once released.

For now, Dawson characterizes AI’s move into media as a cautious waiting game.

“I think that a lot of communication professionals in the future will be asked to use it in some ways, so we can’t paint it as dishonest or evil. Think about Grammarly and spell check – those have all become useful tools,” Dawson said. “I think that our messaging about its use and our acceptance will evolve as our understanding evolves.”

in Action

Write a about the benefits and risks of the use of ChatGPT in jour-

ChatGPT, an AI language model, is increasingly being used in journalism to speed up fact-checking and reporting, but experts warn that

Reporter’s Note: Responses generated by ChatGPT pull from a dataset that stops in September 2021. If a journalist sought information or a fully-written story about something occurring in more recent months, the chatbot would prove useless.

Prompt: Write a news story about the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

ChatGPT Response: Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is still alive as of my knowledge cutoff date, which is September 2021. I do not have any information suggesting that he has passed away since then. However, it’s important to note that my knowledge may not be up-to-date with any recent events or news