In its ongoing quest to revolutionize diverse fields with its powerful language models, OpenAI has now extended its reach into the realm of education. Today, the company unveiled a blog post titled “Teaching with AI,” shedding light on how educators from various countries, predominantly at the university level but also in high schools, have integrated ChatGPT into their classrooms.
These educational use cases span a wide spectrum. One educator employs ChatGPT as an educational role player, taking on roles like a debate rival or recruiter to engage students in dialogues. Another harnesses its capabilities to assist English-as-a-second-language students with translation. Yet another encourages their students to fact-check information generated by ChatGPT.
In a noteworthy move, OpenAI has also collaborated with AI influencer and Wharton School professor Ethan Mollick, along with his wife and fellow professor Lilach Mollick, to develop sample prompts aimed at assisting teachers with lesson planning. These prompts can even transform the default ChatGPT into an “AI tutor” for students.
When questioned on whether OpenAI compensated Ethan Mollick for the use of these prompts, he responded in the negative, stating that he had never received any form of compensation from OpenAI for their use, emphasizing that the prompts and materials used were previously published.
However, the integration of generative AI into the classroom environment has sparked controversy, particularly regarding its potential misuse by students to bypass their own coursework, such as essay writing. Some schools, districts, and education departments worldwide have already banned the application and added it to their internet network blocklists.
Notably, the New York City Public School system reversed its stance in May and decided to permit teachers to utilize ChatGPT as part of their teaching toolkit.
Earlier this year, OpenAI made headlines by introducing an “AI Text Classifier” designed to enable users, including educators, to discern whether text was AI-generated. However, this tool was discontinued last month due to its low accuracy rate.
Today, OpenAI has elaborated on the challenges of AI-generated content detection in a new Educator FAQ. Responding to the question of how educators can address students presenting AI-generated content as their own, OpenAI notes that existing tools struggle to reliably differentiate between AI-generated and human-generated content. It’s a complex issue compounded by the fact that students can make subtle edits to evade detection, making the educational landscape a dynamic and evolving field in the era of AI.
