Julia Posz
April 19, 2023
TWC 454
T. Tripathi
ChatGPT And The Academic Culture In Questioning
“When technology shifts, it bends the culture” – Kevin Kelly
The other night while developing this paper, my introduction was acted out before me. While waiting in a sushi restaurant for a friend, I was seated behind a middle school aged girl and her father. The father casually asks the girl how school is going, to which she excitedly replies, “I have this new app on my phone to write my essays for me!”. She then proceeded to pull up the AI phone application and verbally command the app to produce a four-paragraph essay on professional sports. I was terrified, inspired, and curious all at once.
This leads me to introduce the topic of my research paper; will ChatGPT positively impact or corrupt the academic culture as we know it? Are children going to learn with AI or work around the bans some schools have already implemented? Will we see academic culture bend and shift at the potential rise of a new technological era? Research shows the positive and negative reviews and theories from prestigious universities such as Harvard’s Crimson Rose, which states, “professors are grappling whether or not to ban ChatGPT”
ChatGPT, according to openai.com, is a software “trained to follow an instruction in a prompt or detailed response”. Meaning all forms of questions, mathematics , writing responses or literary prompts can be pregenerated through verbal command (think of the sushi restaurant example) or written command. Combining this information with the unfortunate but general fact acknowledgement that students do cheat. Or use technology to help cut out one of the prime derivatives of academic culture; critical and independent thinking. The question remains, will kids use ChatGPT to chat and plaragrise? Or is there a possibility that like the other technological waves we have lived through, learn how to adapt, teach moderation and responsibility to our children? The idea that society will completely rely on a software to produce artificially generated work means cutting out an enormous part of what makes human life original, full and creative. The work we produce ourselves. Will we learn to trust our teachers, educational board and children to evolve alongside this new technology, using it as a recourse? Or, will it all fall to AI-generatedd prompts?
Brookings.com wrote an article questioning similar concerns. “Is ChatGPT the end of trust? Will college essays survive?”. The same article states that the New York City Department of Education, “Took a drastic step in addressing these concerns by blocking access to ChatGPT on all devices and networks.” These early responses and preventions hinder with the fear and concern most of us; how will this new wave of technology impact the culture and curriculum of our academic culture?
With my live example, the general knowledge and concern of ChatGPT capabilities have already persisted. The preventions taken by education boards speak of the polarization that may be upon academic culture and society as we know it today. A new of era of learning looms over the future generations academic culture. Will the methodology behind critical thinking and comprehension be replaced entirely with automated apps? The relevance of ChatGPTs impact on accademic culture evolves the notion that original thought can be replaced entirely through an automated system. Creatively, this threatens subjects such as liberal arts, science, history and liberal art as well. Could students really go from hand drawing pictures to asking a phone application or computer software for them? Will we really change academic culture and risk transforming the future of work force, original thought, critical thinking and human creativity? These fears all stem from the idea that our children will not be trusted with such a high functioning software.
The general relevance stems fom concern. Without students going to school and not traditionally learning or intaking academic curriculum, because there may be easy access from a personal device to process all homework, prompts and classwork through artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT. Originally authored assignments and problem solving skills could be compromised – then what happens when those students in the future? With only the knowledge and capacities to process work tasking through an app – our world will soon be as artificial as the people who run it. Leaving quality of life in question, leading back to the relevance of concern that ChatGPT has brought into academic culture.
Researching the potential negative impacts of ChatGPT’s influence on educational culture was one part of this research the second component was examining the otherside. What if ChatGPT could be used as a tool, rather than seen a as a foe? U.C Davis’s “The Aggie” wrote an article examining ChatGTP and education culture – giving more faith to our students and school systems. The Aggie stated, “So with the rise of AI technology could this mean the end of creativity and integrity in the public sphere?”. “The answer is no – as long as it is used responsibly”. Can we trust our children or educational boards to introduce ChatGPT as a tool rather than a reliance for students to chat and plagarise from? Think of when computers were introduced into our students course cirrciulmn. Schools didn’t cease original lectures, math lessons and reading comprehension – nor did teachers replace themselves with computers – we as a society evolved ourselves and our children in a relevant wave of technology, to better prepare them for a technologically influenced work force. We teach our children responsibility when it comes to use the internet – monitoring the content our children consume and the amount of time on computers. The same responsibility will be defined and initiated if ChatGPT makes its way into course cirrciulmn.
What does this mean? “If used responsibly?”. It means, like with our prior technological eras and evolutions in the past, that we as a society and culture do not have to completely integrate the quality and curriculum of our children academic culture with ChatGPT. We rather learn to live with it in moderation, a most of us try to do when it comes to technology. The capacity for human creativity and the free will that separates human from machine, persists naturally and greatly through each person, especially children. The idea that ChatGPT could take that away, is unlikely to actually transpire. Children have an innate sense to want to discover, create for themselves, not process everything through an application or software. Using ChatGPT in moderation is comparable to the moderate screen time many parents try to limit for their children.
Covering two sides of relevant perspective – another comes from a different perspective. Should educational culture teach with ChatGPT? According to the New York Times, yes, cheating is the, “immediate and practical fear” – The Times also argue that banning the software won’t prevent cheating – rather enhance the chances of cheating and plagarism all together. The same article endources the idea that, “ChatGPT can be used as a teachers aid – one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring and better prepare students to work alongside AI systems as adults”.
Introducing students to AI technology in today’s educational culture and society will prepare them for the state of the world and work force they will enter. Education culture once, didn’t have computers or typing classes but as time and technology evolved – so did the curriculum and classes in k-12 education. Society integrated the relevance of technology into schools; and the results were not negative, rather positively impactful for students to learn relevant skills to better prepare them in the workforce.
With all sides examined and examplained – what argument is left for ChatGPT’s influence on accademic culture remaining?
I argue that ChatGPT, like the rest of our digital world, will be integrated into our academic culture, but will not pollute it. Technology is a wonderful invention that has an ever expanding capacity. Most of which is designed to enhance or assist our lives for the better. When it comes to the sanctity of our future generations academic quality and culture. The research given shows concern, but also hope. Rather than giving up hope that our the future generations to come will have an negatively impacted education due to ChatGPT – we must prevail with the idea that preserving the orginal thought of educational will continue on. Again, the human capacity for free will and critical thinking lives innately within us. We cannot completely rely of a machine to think for us. Our children will grow up in an academic culture where ChatGPT is present and relevant – but that does not take away original thought or authoring of assignments.
In conclusion; while the rise of automatically generating software hinders fear and threat to the future quality of academic culture – it is unlikely we will see the full display of negative fear or impact playout. In which ChatGPT takes over academic culture, replacing original thought and critical thinking with AI-generated thought and prompts. Rather, like we have a society have already evolved with technology in our academic culture as a tool compared to a replacement. Academic culture will continue to prevail in the name and betterment for our childrens future generation academic quality.