Many Universities Sabotage ChatGPT Use
Professors fed-up with students handing in papers machined by AI writers are bobbing-and-weaving to make it tougher to cheat with the tools.
ChatGPT has triggered a frenzy across the writing world since early December with its ability to quickly auto-generate lucid, mostly on-point prose of up-to-500-words — using just a few text inputs.
Observes writer Kalley Huang: “Department chairs and administrators are starting to overhaul classrooms in response to ChatGPT, prompting a potentially huge shift in teaching and learning.
“Some professors are redesigning their courses entirely, making changes that include more oral exams, group work — and handwritten assessments in lieu of typed ones.”
Plus, more than 6,000 teachers from Harvard, Yale and other universities have also signed up to use GPTZero — a program that promises to quickly detect AI-generated text, Huang adds.
The moves fly-in-the face of views from other professors, who believe there’s no real way to block use of ChatGPT — so it might as well be incorporated into curriculums as a handy tool.
For a quick study on the ChatGPT frenzy, check-out, “ChatGPT: Next Generation AI Writing Arrives,” by Joe Dysart.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*In-Depth Guide: WriteCream: LearnWire offers a step-by-step, 13-minute video guide on how to create a basic blog post with AI writer WriteCream.
Like many current-generation AI writers, WriteCream is adept at auto-generating short, cookie-cutter, generalized blog posts on common concepts.
LearnWire’s verdict: WriteCream is a perfectly acceptable tool for cranking-out generalized blog posts.
*All Aboard: The Case for Encouraging ChatGPT Use in Schools: Two writers for Time Magazine insist that educators should welcome AI autowriter ChatGPT into their schools — and the-sooner-the-better.
Their reasoning: AI technologies like ChatGPT are going to shape the world students will live in.
So it’s incumbent on teachers and professors to prepare their students for that world, according to Joanne Lipman and Rebecca Distler:
Valuable ChatGPT assignments, according to the two, might include:
~Students might be asked to analyze a ChatGPT-generated report on a historical event to track down its source and assess its validity
~Students could be taught rhetoric by being assigned to challenge the reasoning behind writing produced by ChatGPT
As for finding ways to block use of ChatGPT for student writing: Unfortunately, that ship has already sailed, according to the two.
They write: “On a practical basis, a ban simply won’t work. Students will still have access to ChatGPT outside of school.
“Not surprisingly, students have always found creative ways to circumvent such bans.”
*The Floodgates Open: Commercial Apps Based on ChatGPT Get Green Light: Software developers who have been salivating over the prospect of licensing AI writing sensation ChatGPT to create third party apps have cause for cheer.
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has established a waiting list developers can join to get first dibs on using ChatGPT for development projects.
That means it’s only a matter of time before consumers will begin to see commercial AI writing apps powered by ChatGPT.
Among those most keenly interested in at least looking at licensing ChatGPT for AI writing are the 75+ AI writing tools already on the market.
Currently, most commercial AI writing tools are software interfaces that license OpenAI’s older GPT-3 autowriting engine to do the heavy lifting when it comes to automated writing.
*AI Robot Lawyer Seeks Gig in U.S. Supreme Court: DoNotPay — an online do-it-yourself legal advisory service — is so confident in its AI lawyer module, it’s offering to pay $1 million to any lawyer willing to argue a U.S. Supreme Court case using the arguments of its AI robot.
Observes Joshua Browder, CEO, DoNotPay: “DoNotPay will pay any lawyer or person $US one million with an upcoming case in front of the United States Supreme Court to wear AirPods and let our robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what it says.”
So far, there are no takers.
But DoNotPay’s AI lawyer is slated to debut next month in a slightly less-luminous-role.
It will be disputing a parking ticket in a U.S. courtroom, according to writer Jody Serrano.
*CNET Stumbles With ChatGPT-Written Articles: Highly respected tech pub CNET has been forced to issue numerous corrections on tech stories it allowed ChatGPT to write for its pages.
Observes writer Lauren Leffer: “In one single AI-written explainer on compounding interest, there were at least five significant inaccuracies, which have now been amended.”
Bottom line: Looks like CNET got blinded by ChatGPT’s sparkle and forgot that the software’s maker OpenAI has always cautioned that the tool sometimes fabricates facts as it writes.
*AI and Content Creation: Is One Style Good Enough for All of Us?: Writer Ian Whitworth laments that for all the wonder AI writing musters, it often auto-generates writing in the same style.
Observes Whitworth: “ChatGPT, Jasper and all the rest are powerful conformity machines, giving you the ability to churn out Bible-length material about yourself and your business that’s exactly the same as your competitors.”
Whitworth is accurate, to a point: Many users of AI writers simply churn-out writing using the default, often plain vanilla writing style of their AI writer.
What Whitworth leaves out: Many AI writers — including Jasper, Rytr, Copy.ai and similar — also offer users the ability to auto-generate writing in different styles or ‘voices.’
Personally, I’ve used the distinctly different voices offered by a number of AI writers and have found that they do often auto-generate writing in different writing styles.
*OpenAI Urges Reality Check on Upcoming GPT-4 Release: OpenAI is shouldering the enviable problem that many of its users and fans sing its praises and upcoming capabilities more fervently than the people who actually work there.
To wit: Rumors have been flying for months now that the upgrade to GPT-3 — GPT-4 — is just a breath away.
Observes Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI: “The GPT-4 rumor mill is a ridiculous thing. I don’t know where it all comes from.
“People are begging to be disappointed — and they will be.”
The bottom line: “It could be pretty soon — it could take a while,” Altman says.
*Shoot-Out: ChatGPT Versus GPT-3: Writer Dhiren Manga offers a detailed compare/contrast in this look at these two auto-text generators, both made by OpenAI.
In comparison: In my own experience, ChatGPT is much more reliable, on-point and significantly more interesting when auto-generating text.
When asked to create a simple press release after being given a detailed set of inputs, for example, using ChatGPT was like asking a very smart friend to write a highly focused press release, based on the inputs.
But using existing commercial AI writers to write the same press release using the same inputs was often more like asking a fairly smart friend — with a mind that occasionally drifts on novel tangents — to write the same press release.
The good news: Given that OpenAI is already inviting software developers to commercialize ChatGTP, it’s a good bet that current commercial makers of AI writing tools will incorporate ChatGTP under-the-hood if it makes sense from a business and performance vantage point for them.
*Forbes: The Six Best Books on AI: “A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond in 2020,” is one of the top six books Forbes recommends if you’re looking to quickly get up-to-speed on AI.
Observes Forbes: The book “takes a close look at how AI could eliminate some jobs and warns that there is a real chance ‘technological unemployment’ could occur.
“However, it theorizes that this could also mean a shift in our world that causes work to be put on the back burner by ensuring everyone has enough resources to live on.”
Really? A world where everyone can simply Netflix-and-chill and not worry about getting up for work the next morning?
Sign me up.
Share a Link: Please consider sharing a link to https://RobotWritersAI.com from your blog, social media post, publication or emails. More links leading to RobotWritersAI.com helps everyone interested in AI-generated writing.
–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.