This Article First Appeared In Indianexpress On Jan 20, 2023
Recently, I gave a talk to a group of K-12 teachers and public school administrators in New York. The topic was artificial intelligence, and how schools would need to adapt to prepare students for a future filled with all kinds of capable AI tools.
But it turned out that my audience cared about only one AI tool: ChatGPT, the buzzy chatbot developed by OpenAI that is capable of writing cogent essays, solving science and math problems and producing working computer code.
ChatGPT is new — it was released in late November — but it has already sent many educators into a panic. Students are using it to write their assignments, passing off AI-generated essays and problem sets as their own. Teachers and school administrators have been scrambling to catch students using the tool to cheat, and they are fretting about the havoc ChatGPT could wreak on their lesson plans. (Some publications have declared, perhaps a bit prematurely, that ChatGPT has killed homework altogether.)