If you have been reading the news in the last week or two, you have heard about this new chat-bot, and maybe you have seen some of the dire predictions for the world of education. And really: those predictions are not wrong. This is going to be a big change in the world of education – changing the way instructors give assignments, as well as the way schools define “cheating” or not.

Of course, we all interact with chat-bots all the time. If you have been online talking with big companies – to return things, to ask questions, to check your bank balance – you have almost certainly been talking with a bot, not a human. Fine, no problem. It’s a good idea to shift the repetitive, boring tasks over to computers – that can do these things faster and maybe better than humans could do them. Then humans can take over the more complicated, maybe more interesting tasks themselves.

But this chat-bot is a whole new thing for most of us. From an article on BigThink website was this description: “The tech world is abuzz over ChatGPT, a chat bot that is said to be the most advanced ever made. It can create poems, songs, and even computer code. It convincingly constructed a passage of text on how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the voice of the King James Bible.  As a PhD microbiologist, I devised a 10-question quiz that would be appropriate as a final exam for college-level microbiology students. ChatGPT blew it away.”

Oh – and did I mention that it’s free? And anyone can use it? You can ask questions, check computer code, and (with a different section of the site) create art never seen by anyone. But, it’s not you. It’s the AI.

You can login here.

Here is the website, and their description of what they are doing with ChatGPT: “We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit 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.”

I signed up for an account. The site tells you “Free Research Preview: ChatGPT is optimized for dialogue. Our goal is to make AI systems more natural to interact with, and your feedback will help us improve our systems and make them safer.”

I said I was writing this article (yes – this question is already becoming a trope 🙂 ), and asked if it wanted to tell librarians anything about itself. This was the response: “As an AI assistant trained by OpenAI, my primary function is to assist users in generating human-like text based on the prompts given to me. I am not a real person and do not have personal experiences or opinions. My responses are generated using advanced machine learning algorithms and a vast dataset of text. I am constantly learning and improving my ability to generate coherent and relevant responses to a wide range of prompts. I am here to assist librarians in their writing tasks and provide them with accurate and helpful information.”

The material definitely emphasizes that accuracy is not guaranteed, and people should not ask for advice. And you can see- the writing is pretty stilted, it sounds like a student with poor writing skills who is possibly copying from other sources, or just not feeling confident in their own writing voice yet. I’m guessing that will change as the AI gets more experienced – which is happening really quickly.

I next asked What is the best thing about school libraries? And the response was, again, pretty predictable. It sounded like something copied from a website – not a lot of personality and life yet, but not bad. “One of the best things about school libraries is that they provide students with access to a wide range of educational resources and materials. This includes books, periodicals, and online databases that can help students with their studies and support their academic growth. School libraries also often have trained librarians who can assist students in finding and using these resources, which can help them develop important research and information literacy skills. Additionally, school libraries can be a supportive and inclusive space for students, where they can feel comfortable learning and exploring new ideas.”

There have already been dozens of articles about using chat-bots to write essays for school – this one and others. It is an interesting dimension to thinking about cheating in school. Have you seen websites like Course Hero? People can upload their papers, and future students – who have foolish instructors who do not bother to update their assignments from semester to semester – can just download and turn them in. Is that cheating? Probably? It depends on how the rules are written.

And if a student types in a prompt for an essay to this site, and turns in the results – is that cheating? Maybe? At least one student has claimed it isn’t, because the rules at their school said they could not get help from other people. The chat-bot is not another person. So – is it cheating? Maybe? More importantly – how will teachers ever know? How can you write some very carefully detailed rules against this, and be sure you are covering every detail?

Or, maybe it’s not so tough. I asked this chatbot to come up with a statement. Here was the answer:

here is a sample statement that you can use to forbid students from using a chatbot to do their assignments:

“Dear Students,

It has come to our attention that some of you have been using chatbots to complete your assignments. Using a chatbot to do your work is a form of academic dishonesty and is strictly prohibited.

We expect all students to complete their own work and to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity. Any student found using a chatbot to do their assignments will be subject to disciplinary action.

Please refrain from using chatbots or any other forms of unauthorized assistance in your work. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact your teacher or the school administration.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.”

It’s an interesting time, for sure. Let’s be the library people who participate in making this a force for good, not just another dystopian garbage fire of social media. Good things can always happen!