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The recent release of ChatGPT—a language model chatbot that can answer questions, program computer code and write essays—has garnered mass media attention as educators and students have raised questions about the role artificial intelligence will play in education moving forward.
The New York City Department of Education has already blocked the language processor across school networks and devices, and the Los Angeles Unified School District has followed suit, implementing similar restrictions in fear of student plagiarism.
As university administrators across the country debate the ethics of artificial intelligence in the classroom, ChatGPT has continued to gain traction on college campuses, with many USC students already using the technology to their advantage.
“I think it’s a resource for sure,” said neuroscience major, Saanjhi Shahdadpuri. I’ve definitely used it a couple of times, not to just use what it gives me, but to get some ideas for assignments.”
Her friend, psychology student Emily Orman, echoed the assessment: “It’s really impressive to see what artificial intelligence software thinks about what I’m doing.”
Others are more hesitant to use the groundbreaking technology, like master’s of digital social media student, Trinity Gomez.
“I think that it’s really cool but also really dangerous in terms of students using it for their assignments, for papers, for things like that,” said Gomez. “I think the technology is really cool and it’s awesome that we’re getting into that, but I also think that professors might run into students kind of taking advantage of it for their projects.”
Eunice Dulalia, a global health student, had mixed feelings about the software. She was introduced to the chatbot when her friends asked it to write a whole script for their screenwriting class.
“It was really nice—really well done and I thought it was super cool,” said Dulalia. “But then when I thought about it for a second, it was like, I just hope it doesn’t take away from the creativity that people actually have in terms of writing, especially in the creative fields.”
Music majors Josh Grossman and Rachel Barton had similar concerns about the technology, sharing that their professor had demonstrated one of its potential downsides in class.
“Our music teacher was actually just saying this morning that you can put into one of them: ‘write a song about cupcakes in the style of Lady Gaga’ and it gave them a lyric,” said Grossman.
“We’re songwriters so that’s going to put us out of business,” joked Barton.
Grossman added his general concerns about the technology outside of his personal career goals.
“I’ve never met someone who used that, but I definitely have heard a lot of discourse about it,” he said. “I do think that if it gets much more prevalent in society than it is right now that there could definitely be a lot of issues posed with plagiarism, and in general, just kind of taking over the place of humans.”
When asked if they would personally use it in the classroom, students still seemed a bit hesitant.
“I think it’s funny when my friends put everyone’s names in it and ask it to make up a story, but I don’t think I would personally use it,” sociology major Miko Mariscal said. “It’s a little scary how good it is.”
“My professors have told us, ‘don’t use ChatGPT’ so I feel like I’m too scared because they’re definitely able to tell,” Dulalia added.