Loading…Your New Teacher: Celebrating One Year of ChatGPT

Did you know we’ve had chatbots for decades?

The first was named Eliza. Created by Joseph Weizenbaum back in 1966, it used pattern recognition technology and a script to simulate a psychotherapist.

(See below.) Future iterations were tested for many uses, like psychiatry and research projects. But most simply allowed users to chat.

Since humans are a curious species by nature, it’s little wonder we’ve decided to ask these bots our deepest, most vexing questions. But do chatbots have what it takes to be the tomorrow teachers?

As it turns out, AI chatbots arrived at a key juncture of our education crisis. Teachers are paid less than ever, schools are shuttering, college degrees are going through the roof price-wise, and to complicate matters, many young people are falling ever behind in our society wide COVID hangover.

Zooming out, it’s evident we have a dynamic, hyper speed-paced world. Readers of Consume at Once know this already. As we’ll discuss in this article, so much emerging tech can make it hard to predict which skill sets to prioritize, especially for our youth. Already, many students fear their career of choice will get automated—right after they’ve invested so heavily in education.

Meanwhile, just when it looked like education was on the verge of utter disruption via advancements like distance learning, ChatGPT came on the scene. So, will chatbots replace an entire career like teaching? Will we find ways to work with it? And how will chatbots and other A.I. tools shape our understanding of credentials?

So many questions like these leave schools, universities, and trade programs facing a big decision: to embrace, restrict, or ban this technology.

Happy birthday, ChatGPT!

Nearly a year ago, ChatGPT made its debut, generating widespread interest and media coverage. ChatGPT's uncanny ability to generate human-like text and insights, plus accomplish tasks has been a boon for many industries. It’s shown incredible promise in various applications, from content generation to customer service automation.

But the reaction hasn’t all been positive.

Fearing plagiarism and other cheating concerns, some schools have called for blanket bans of the tech. Countries like Russia, China, and Italy have outlawed ChatGPT, citing misinformation and privacy concerns. Meanwhile, to many mental health professionals' dismay, people have turned the bot into their very own therapist, sometimes producing disastrous effects.

OpenAI has also come under fire for ChatGPT producing biased or politically insensitive content. Experts warn the bot is a massive liability for misinformation. They advise against using it as your sole news source.

This is especially relevant as the 2024 general election will be our first in the brave new ChatGPT era. Even more questions abound. Who knows what kind of (bad) information an AI known for “hallucinating” will produce? What does a world look like where bots are now producing headlines—affecting the zeitgeist? How do we ensure ChatGPT’s commitment to the truth? And who gets to train these bots and what kind of biases might they harbor?

These are no idle queries.

Social media gave rise to much misinformation already. It stands to reason AI chatbots could turbocharge this phenomenon. Independent journalism is a good thing. Tech assisting journalists is also a positive.

But with the unprecedented productive capacity of these machines, we’re losing the ability to decipher truth in a pile of confusion. So, while it may seem tedious, it’s becoming ever more important to understand and mitigate biases in AI-generated content.

But perhaps the largest frontier for ChatGPT is the academic world, where plagiarism has become ever rampant in the last year. Widespread cheating has caused some schools to rethink the concept altogether.

Naturally, many students now use AI in their writing. A predictable outcome, it’s natural to want to cut corners when opportunity arises. But this is a problem. A big one. Think about what calculators do as mental crutches. Once upon a time we could do multiplication and long division in our heads.

Not so with many young people these days.

Now, we risk atrophying our reading/writing skills more with increasing dependence on AI. Plus, when chatbots can write in the style of others, we are condoning widespread cheating—which only hurts our kids in the long run.

Some have insisted on moving past the issue of plagiarism, encouraging teachers to “work around it.” Maybe instead, the solution is to work with it. A new school of teachers is trying to use ChatGPT for good. Some veteran teachers say the panic over AI is akin to past resistance to things like “the internet and graphic calculators.”

As mentioned, the jury remains out.

Other teachers use bots to show students what not to do. Some have had ChatGPT write essays on works such as Romeo and Juliet and Moby Dick. Their students then enthusiastically critique the AI essays. Detroit teacher Sarah Millard claims, “My students have never been so engaged in writing.”

In other cases, tech has already been embedded into everyday educational apps like Duolingo and Quizlet. Instructional tools like flashcards and quiz apps now use AI to trace patterns, optimizing learning outcomes. OpenAI is also collaborating with companies and educators to set boundaries and provide fact sheets on AI learning materials.

Though much remains unclear one year into ChatGPT’s emergence, one thing is certain: ChatGPT can’t replace the human element of a teacher. Instructors can be our greatest mentors and role models. In some cases, they’re safe adults that children can turn to with trust. More, they also play the role of advisors, counselors, and coaches for after-school sports. In short, the overreliance on AI chatbots might lead to a devaluation of human educators, who bring empathy and real-world experience to the learning process.

Ultimately, the journey toward a compromise, where tech complements traditional teaching, promises to create a richer, more engaging learning environment for our students. Don’t believe me? Just query ChatGPT.

It’ll back this up.

Sameer Ahuja is a tech executive and Scarsdale Village Trustee Ahuja who writes a newsletter, Consume at Once, that discusses how technology is transforming how we create and consume movies, videos, TV, games, sports, and social media.