CHAT GPT
The use of ChatGPT by students and professors from Belarus, China and Turkey
OpenAL company developed and released ChatGPT in November 2022.
The list of open regions shows that OpenAI's application programming interface (API) is currently open to 161 countries and regions, including Asia, which includes Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, but excludes mainland China and Hong Kong, China.
ChatGPT is trained using unsupervised learning on massive amounts of text data from the internet. It uses a transformer architecture that allows it to learn from the patterns and relationships in the data without explicit guidance. Specifically, ChatGPT uses a language modeling objective, where it tries to predict the next word in a sentence given the preceding context. The resulting model can then generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses to user inputs in natural language.
As an AI language model, ChatGPT's ability to verify the accuracy of information it provides is limited. Currently, it relies on pre-existing data sets and algorithms to generate responses to queries. To improve its accuracy, one potential solution could be to incorporate fact-checking mechanisms and access to more diverse and reliable sources of information. However, this raises questions about the trade-off between accuracy and the speed and efficiency that ChatGPT is known for. Nonetheless, such improvements could enhance ChatGPT's potential use in educational contexts by enabling it to provide more reliable information to students and learners.
General information
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI.
ChatGPT is versatile. It can write and debug computer programs, compose music, fairy tales and student essays, answer test questions (sometimes, depending on the test, at a level above the average human test-taker), write poetry and song lyrics, translate and summarize text and so on.
ChatGPT has undoubtedly sparked a global craze, with a large number of users from different countries entering the OpenAI website to try out the ChatGPT service. Students and teachers are no exception.
Its appearance has also led to discussions in the field of education.
Can students be allowed to use ChatGPT when completing assignments?
Does it place any threats or new demands on our students and teachers?
What positive or negative impact does it have on education?
Four of us from Belarus, China and Turkey interviewed students and teachers in each of our countries to ask them what they thought of ChatGPT.
Belarus
Of course I've heard about the ChatGPT. Since the official website is banned in Belarus, I use the analogue in the Telegram, as well as the application "Poe", by the way, the application gives more competent answers to questions.
I think that the bot works well. I use it, but the information looks like children's essays. I think you can find better information on the Internet. I can say that the chat makes learning easier and saves time. But from the point of view of education, this is bad, because we become more lazy and the learning process does not happen. If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat because it helps free up time for more important things. For example, I had a classmate who knew mathematics and physics well, but did not know Russian at all. Chat could help him write essays, and he would spend this time studying mathematics to become an even better specialist.
I think that the bot works well. I use it, but the information looks like children's essays. I think you can find better information on the Internet. I can say that the chat makes learning easier and saves time. But from the point of view of education, this is bad, because we become more lazy and the learning process does not happen. If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat because it helps free up time for more important things. For example, I had a classmate who knew mathematics and physics well, but did not know Russian at all. Chat could help him write essays, and he would spend this time studying mathematics to become an even better specialist.
I've heard about ChatGPT, but I've never used it. If we talk about what stopped me, it was the inability to register on the official website from Belarus. Despite the fact that I do not use chat, I believe that it brings positive features to the development of education. Sometimes, in the process of studying, you do not have time to cope with all deadlines, and the neural network has not yet developed to such an extent as to write some kind of full-fledged project. It makes basic sketches, from which you, as an author, compose a full-fledged text. And currently it does not have a negative impact. I think it will become negative in 5-6 years, when it will grow into a separate program that can replace the workplace.
If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat at some points. Moreover, there is already a neural network that allows you to find out whether the text was written with the help of the chat or not.
If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat at some points. Moreover, there is already a neural network that allows you to find out whether the text was written with the help of the chat or not.
I've heard about ChatGPT, but I've never used it because I didn't understand how) I think that the chat has a negative impact. I think that in the future it may deprive people of their jobs. For example, us, journalists.
If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat, since in fact nothing depends on my permission. If students want to, they will use.
The professor told us that texts written by chat can be distinguished by structure.
If I were a professor, I would allow students to use the chat, since in fact nothing depends on my permission. If students want to, they will use.
The professor told us that texts written by chat can be distinguished by structure.
China
The first was to help with assignments. Students A and B from the Fine Arts major said they use ChatGPT to write explanatory text or introductions to their work when completing their design work, while student I from the Bilingual Broadcasting major said he usually uses it to complete more tedious tasks, such as writing a book report or an event summary.
Secondly, it is used as a search engine. Students D&E&F from the Game Production major said they use ChatGPT to gather information. Student F said, "I am usually looking to search for something that I can't search for on a search engine. It's also used to assist with searches."
Others use it to aid language learning. Student H, from a Korean language major, said she uses an app that is the Korean equivalent of ChatGPT. "I use it to look up some Korean words or grammar and it will give me detailed explanations of usage." She said.
Secondly, it is used as a search engine. Students D&E&F from the Game Production major said they use ChatGPT to gather information. Student F said, "I am usually looking to search for something that I can't search for on a search engine. It's also used to assist with searches."
Others use it to aid language learning. Student H, from a Korean language major, said she uses an app that is the Korean equivalent of ChatGPT. "I use it to look up some Korean words or grammar and it will give me detailed explanations of usage." She said.
Student G from Russian major, although he had not used ChatGPT, said through his observation on social media platforms, "I saw some up owners using ChatGPT to write essays for civil service exams on B-site, and I found that it came out better than I did."
But there were also many students who pointed out the problems with ChatGPT. Student C from Computer Science said ChatGPT is a more professional tool than the average search engine, "but it does still have some problems in that it makes up nonsense, so that means it still needs to be tweaked and modified." Student I, who is from the bilingual broadcasting course, said that ChatGPT is capable of doing some relatively basic work, but once it is used for some more rigorous tasks, such as writing a dissertation, it starts to make things up, "Many of the literature references it gave me were made up, including the author. That’s not good."
But there were also many students who pointed out the problems with ChatGPT. Student C from Computer Science said ChatGPT is a more professional tool than the average search engine, "but it does still have some problems in that it makes up nonsense, so that means it still needs to be tweaked and modified." Student I, who is from the bilingual broadcasting course, said that ChatGPT is capable of doing some relatively basic work, but once it is used for some more rigorous tasks, such as writing a dissertation, it starts to make things up, "Many of the literature references it gave me were made up, including the author. That’s not good."
Student G, a Russian language student, said with certainty that this technology will probably replace the market for translators. "That's why when I was looking for a job I didn't look for that kind of translation job." He said.
Student C, from a computer science major, is not particularly anxious about this at the moment, although she thinks ChatGPT will definitely have an impact on the computer science profession, such as possibly replacing some low-end programmers. "Because I feel like it's still being used more as a tool that will improve our efficiency." She said.
Student H, from the Korean language program, on the other hand, believes that no matter what the program is, ChatGPT is hitting more of the bottom end of the market than the top end. "For example, some basic translation, or other jobs that are not very demanding and cheaper, may be replaced by AI, but in jobs that are a bit more high-end, it may be more of a tool that is used and controlled by people." She gave an example.
Student C, from a computer science major, is not particularly anxious about this at the moment, although she thinks ChatGPT will definitely have an impact on the computer science profession, such as possibly replacing some low-end programmers. "Because I feel like it's still being used more as a tool that will improve our efficiency." She said.
Student H, from the Korean language program, on the other hand, believes that no matter what the program is, ChatGPT is hitting more of the bottom end of the market than the top end. "For example, some basic translation, or other jobs that are not very demanding and cheaper, may be replaced by AI, but in jobs that are a bit more high-end, it may be more of a tool that is used and controlled by people." She gave an example.
Student A, from the art department, thinks that the requirements have been reduced. "Programming, for example, is something you might have had to learn specifically before, but now you can just ask him. We just need to have an idea." She said.
Other students think new requirements will be made.
Student C, from Computer Science, thinks we need to master the ability to use AI and "take on the role of an operator"; Student F, from Game Design, thinks we need to improve our ability to identify the real from the fake, "which may require students to have a broader knowledge "Student G, from Russian, on the contrary, believes that we students need to do well in our own field of expertise, "for example, if we do literary translation we need to learn more and specialise to a level that machines cannot replace at the moment", but he also suggests another idea, which is "Combine your existing major with another skill, such as finance or programming, and go for a combination of skills." Student H from Korean and Student I from Bilingual Broadcasting were unanimous in stressing the importance of creative skills. "Because ChatGPT doesn't get to develop its own style, and if you have your own style, it won't replace you as easily." Student H said.
Other students think new requirements will be made.
Student C, from Computer Science, thinks we need to master the ability to use AI and "take on the role of an operator"; Student F, from Game Design, thinks we need to improve our ability to identify the real from the fake, "which may require students to have a broader knowledge "Student G, from Russian, on the contrary, believes that we students need to do well in our own field of expertise, "for example, if we do literary translation we need to learn more and specialise to a level that machines cannot replace at the moment", but he also suggests another idea, which is "Combine your existing major with another skill, such as finance or programming, and go for a combination of skills." Student H from Korean and Student I from Bilingual Broadcasting were unanimous in stressing the importance of creative skills. "Because ChatGPT doesn't get to develop its own style, and if you have your own style, it won't replace you as easily." Student H said.
For the students, the positive impacts are
1. reduce the burden of students. student H thinks that some teaching tasks that do not make much sense can be done with ChatGPT, "as long as the framework of the work is built by you, or as long as the ideas are thought out by yourself, it is still good to let ChatGPT do some repetitive mechanical work".
2. Improve learning efficiency. Student E from the computer science department said, "ChatGPT often gives a quick and accurate answer to a general question, or provides a lot of search information", so that students do not spend a lot of time searching for information.
3. Foster a discipline-integrated mindset. Student I said that ChatGPT has a wide range of knowledge and can answer questions from different disciplines, "which helps students to think about issues from multiple disciplines".
Negative effects include:
1. Creating inertia among students. "Students may rely too much on the tool and will not research harder academically." Student H believes that this will also lead to students "not practising their skills and therefore not improving their professionalism".
2. Wasting more time. Student D believes that because ChatGPT will make up answers, "if you are not able to identify what is right or wrong, you will have a lot of problems if you use his answers directly to complete the task, firstly it will be difficult to correct them and secondly you will need to spend more time and effort to search and confirm them.
3. Affecting fairness among students. Student I is concerned about the cost of using ChatGPT for Chinese students and that "not all [Chinese] students have access to it".
For teachers, the positive impacts include:
1. Helping teachers to do their job and improve the quality of teaching. Student C, for example, said, "I saw a video on a video site of ChatGPT helping to write lesson plans, and I think it helps teachers to broaden their ideas." Student H cited, "For example, you can use it to help set up more interesting lesson content when preparing for a lesson."
Negative effects are:
1. Putting new demands on the teacher. Student I believes that teachers may need to spend more time verifying that students' work has been completed by ChatGPT, and Student H makes a similar point, saying that "in the future, the education community will need to define what constitutes plagiarism". I also added: "Since not all [Chinese] students have access to ChatGPT, I think it will also be a test for teachers to ensure that all students have fair access to the tool."
1. reduce the burden of students. student H thinks that some teaching tasks that do not make much sense can be done with ChatGPT, "as long as the framework of the work is built by you, or as long as the ideas are thought out by yourself, it is still good to let ChatGPT do some repetitive mechanical work".
2. Improve learning efficiency. Student E from the computer science department said, "ChatGPT often gives a quick and accurate answer to a general question, or provides a lot of search information", so that students do not spend a lot of time searching for information.
3. Foster a discipline-integrated mindset. Student I said that ChatGPT has a wide range of knowledge and can answer questions from different disciplines, "which helps students to think about issues from multiple disciplines".
Negative effects include:
1. Creating inertia among students. "Students may rely too much on the tool and will not research harder academically." Student H believes that this will also lead to students "not practising their skills and therefore not improving their professionalism".
2. Wasting more time. Student D believes that because ChatGPT will make up answers, "if you are not able to identify what is right or wrong, you will have a lot of problems if you use his answers directly to complete the task, firstly it will be difficult to correct them and secondly you will need to spend more time and effort to search and confirm them.
3. Affecting fairness among students. Student I is concerned about the cost of using ChatGPT for Chinese students and that "not all [Chinese] students have access to it".
For teachers, the positive impacts include:
1. Helping teachers to do their job and improve the quality of teaching. Student C, for example, said, "I saw a video on a video site of ChatGPT helping to write lesson plans, and I think it helps teachers to broaden their ideas." Student H cited, "For example, you can use it to help set up more interesting lesson content when preparing for a lesson."
Negative effects are:
1. Putting new demands on the teacher. Student I believes that teachers may need to spend more time verifying that students' work has been completed by ChatGPT, and Student H makes a similar point, saying that "in the future, the education community will need to define what constitutes plagiarism". I also added: "Since not all [Chinese] students have access to ChatGPT, I think it will also be a test for teachers to ensure that all students have fair access to the tool."
Student D from Game Production explained, "Because I think it's easier for both students and teachers that way."
Student G, from Russian, combined his practical experience with his answer, "Actually, nowadays I use translation software for both translation assignments and for my internship to do translation work. I use translation software first and then adjust it manually or use ChatGPT to adjust it. This is also a trend in the translation industry now. So if I were a teacher, I would make them learn to use these tools." But he also stresses, "In the lower grades, which are the foundation stage, I would ask them to learn independently."
Student I from Bilingual Broadcasting, on the other hand, thinks he would be an enlightened teacher: "Before every new technology is born, there are people who are resistant and want to defend the tradition. But I personally feel I'm still more of an innovative person, so I think I would allow my students to use it as an enlightened teacher."
Student G, from Russian, combined his practical experience with his answer, "Actually, nowadays I use translation software for both translation assignments and for my internship to do translation work. I use translation software first and then adjust it manually or use ChatGPT to adjust it. This is also a trend in the translation industry now. So if I were a teacher, I would make them learn to use these tools." But he also stresses, "In the lower grades, which are the foundation stage, I would ask them to learn independently."
Student I from Bilingual Broadcasting, on the other hand, thinks he would be an enlightened teacher: "Before every new technology is born, there are people who are resistant and want to defend the tradition. But I personally feel I'm still more of an innovative person, so I think I would allow my students to use it as an enlightened teacher."
Turkey
1. I have used it before. I used it to search for informations that I don’t want to search on Google, because sometimes searching on Google requires a lot of work. However with ChatGPT it gives you a clear and explanatory answers directly. Also sometimes when I feel lonely I use it to chat with someone/something.
2. The regulations doesn’t make sense because it is to help us not to make our harder. ChatGPT should not be banned in countries, but there can be some mechanisms founded by for example professors to make it harder the cheat. We need innovation and technology to go further. I am not sure if there are any regulations currently for ChatGPT in Turkey but even if there is I think there shouldn’t be.
3. Mostly it gives the right answers but some of the basic math calculations are wrong sometimes so it still needs a lot of development.
4. In one of my assignments I used it to solve some of the questions and I gave all the information to it. ChatGPT gave me the answer but the good thing is it didn’t just give me the answer, it also gives the explanation and elaborates on how to solve these types of problems.
5. It usually uses the probability sentences in ethical or political questions and it does not give me definite answer about the topic. And I really liked this approach since ethical and political questions does not have a definite answer generally and there are a lot of difference in opinion.
2. The regulations doesn’t make sense because it is to help us not to make our harder. ChatGPT should not be banned in countries, but there can be some mechanisms founded by for example professors to make it harder the cheat. We need innovation and technology to go further. I am not sure if there are any regulations currently for ChatGPT in Turkey but even if there is I think there shouldn’t be.
3. Mostly it gives the right answers but some of the basic math calculations are wrong sometimes so it still needs a lot of development.
4. In one of my assignments I used it to solve some of the questions and I gave all the information to it. ChatGPT gave me the answer but the good thing is it didn’t just give me the answer, it also gives the explanation and elaborates on how to solve these types of problems.
5. It usually uses the probability sentences in ethical or political questions and it does not give me definite answer about the topic. And I really liked this approach since ethical and political questions does not have a definite answer generally and there are a lot of difference in opinion.
1. I have used it for studying, sometimes to do research and I am personally interested in and working with coding and programming so I have used it for it.
2. It is restricted in Saudi Arabia, my home country too. In terms of education, it is not a good idea to ban the whole website in a country.
3. Unless it’s for language purposes it is not always correct. For example if I ask ChatGPT a physics question most of the times the answers are wrong.
4. It has both positive and negative effects. For example sometimes I use it for language purposes for these types of stuff it is really good and have advantages.
5. Depending on what course I am offering, if it’s a language course I wouldn’t allow but if it is STEM courses I wouldn’t have a problem with my students using it.
6. In ChatGPT it is prohibited for it to give any opinions about politics or ethics but some programmers made a prompt and with that it answers any question you ask. For example, let’s say you ask a political opinion, if you put that prompt first it will give you a direct answer for sure.
2. It is restricted in Saudi Arabia, my home country too. In terms of education, it is not a good idea to ban the whole website in a country.
3. Unless it’s for language purposes it is not always correct. For example if I ask ChatGPT a physics question most of the times the answers are wrong.
4. It has both positive and negative effects. For example sometimes I use it for language purposes for these types of stuff it is really good and have advantages.
5. Depending on what course I am offering, if it’s a language course I wouldn’t allow but if it is STEM courses I wouldn’t have a problem with my students using it.
6. In ChatGPT it is prohibited for it to give any opinions about politics or ethics but some programmers made a prompt and with that it answers any question you ask. For example, let’s say you ask a political opinion, if you put that prompt first it will give you a direct answer for sure.
1) I used it for research and finding more about the things that interest me such as books.
2) It is not restricted in Jordan and I don’t believe it should be restricted in any country because I believe people should have freedom of usage of technology.
3) I use it for study and research purposes usually but sometimes I use it to chat with it when I feel lonely. Also I use it to find out more about the things that interests me such as books, sports etc.
4) No, it provides inaccurate answers because ChatGPT can only predict answers and when it is shown a question that it has not seen before such as a unique math question it doesn’t predict that question so it doesn’t answer it correctly.
5) It has had positive effects so far because it explains topics well.
6) I would because I would ask questions that students can get help from ChatGPT when answering the questions but ina way that it wouldn’t give the direct answer.
7) Once I asked ChatGPT if it can love a human being and it said I cannot provide and answer for that question and I believe that was a really interesting experience.
2) It is not restricted in Jordan and I don’t believe it should be restricted in any country because I believe people should have freedom of usage of technology.
3) I use it for study and research purposes usually but sometimes I use it to chat with it when I feel lonely. Also I use it to find out more about the things that interests me such as books, sports etc.
4) No, it provides inaccurate answers because ChatGPT can only predict answers and when it is shown a question that it has not seen before such as a unique math question it doesn’t predict that question so it doesn’t answer it correctly.
5) It has had positive effects so far because it explains topics well.
6) I would because I would ask questions that students can get help from ChatGPT when answering the questions but ina way that it wouldn’t give the direct answer.
7) Once I asked ChatGPT if it can love a human being and it said I cannot provide and answer for that question and I believe that was a really interesting experience.
1) I have used it for writing down my presentation and explain my study material better for me. And it explained in a very detailed way.
2) I didn’t know it was restricted in some countries and in my country it is not restricted. By government, I don’t think it should be regulated because I feel like it is way for people to develop themselves. It is kind of like restricting Goggle and there is no logical reason for that in my opinion.
3) I only used for studying purposes but sometimes for fun I use it to have conversations with ChatGPT and ask for life advices.
4) For ChatGPT to give you correct answers you have to be extremely specific with your question and this way it works properly but if not no, it doesn’t give correct answers usually.
5) For me, I feel like it had positive effects in the sense understanding my learning materials such as my presentations and it explains very thoroughly for me. But at the same time I feel like it has had some negative effects like on people who don’t know how to their assignments that can be very dependent on the AI technology and they wouldn’t further develop themselves.
6) I feel like it I would allow my students to use it because everybody learns in a different ways and even though as a professor I may put all my effort on my students they can still need some extra support for learning the course. For me it is the same concept as using Google or Youtube.
2) I didn’t know it was restricted in some countries and in my country it is not restricted. By government, I don’t think it should be regulated because I feel like it is way for people to develop themselves. It is kind of like restricting Goggle and there is no logical reason for that in my opinion.
3) I only used for studying purposes but sometimes for fun I use it to have conversations with ChatGPT and ask for life advices.
4) For ChatGPT to give you correct answers you have to be extremely specific with your question and this way it works properly but if not no, it doesn’t give correct answers usually.
5) For me, I feel like it had positive effects in the sense understanding my learning materials such as my presentations and it explains very thoroughly for me. But at the same time I feel like it has had some negative effects like on people who don’t know how to their assignments that can be very dependent on the AI technology and they wouldn’t further develop themselves.
6) I feel like it I would allow my students to use it because everybody learns in a different ways and even though as a professor I may put all my effort on my students they can still need some extra support for learning the course. For me it is the same concept as using Google or Youtube.
1) I didn’t know that it was restricted in some countries and I it is not restricted in Palestine, my country. There shouldn’t be any restrictions because at the future it is going to be used just as Google Chrome, so there is no point in restricting an trying to put regulations on it other than the ethical restrictions.
2) I use it only for study purposes there was a time once where I used it to search some companies related to my major.
3) It does work well and it is less time consuming than searching on Goggle.
4) It had a positive impact in a sense that it makes it easier for me to answer questions but it is a little bit bad cause it makes me a little bit lazy and dependent to write essays and that sort of things.
5) Yes, because as I states before it is just like Google chrome and I believe in the future students will be in need to use the AI in general same as any search engine.
6) No, I don’t have anything else to say and I don’t have an interesting story about ChatGPT.
2) I use it only for study purposes there was a time once where I used it to search some companies related to my major.
3) It does work well and it is less time consuming than searching on Goggle.
4) It had a positive impact in a sense that it makes it easier for me to answer questions but it is a little bit bad cause it makes me a little bit lazy and dependent to write essays and that sort of things.
5) Yes, because as I states before it is just like Google chrome and I believe in the future students will be in need to use the AI in general same as any search engine.
6) No, I don’t have anything else to say and I don’t have an interesting story about ChatGPT.
Professors' view
- Maxim Sergeevich TyutenkovBelarusian state university, professor of the Department jf Television and Radio BroadcastingHumanity and technology are developing. The fact that technologies are
developing is good because they simplify our lives. But when artificial
intelligence replaces human power, as ChatGPT can do, I treat it badly.
Of course, I've heard about the chat. This is also a good opportunity to
moderate texts, but it affects their quality. The chat follows a given pattern, it
has a formula, that's how you can distinguish the text written by the chat. I
didn't use it by myself, but my friends shared their experiences.
Now this technology is only developing, so you shouldn't trust the information
that it provides. Chat replaces a person and it is really bad. So man has no
place on this planet? It shouldn't be like this. - Nausicaa TangPhD in International Journalism, Senior lecturer, Communication University of ChinaThe whole history of humanity is a history of technological revolutions. There have been so many technological revolutions before, and people have never been completely replaced.
Karl Popper once said we have three worlds of human perception. ChatGPT is like an encyclopedia, its knowledge base is already far greater than that of human beings, so it can be said that it has already understood and mastered the third world very well. But what can it not do? It has no way of perceiving the physical first world, such as warmth, a word it can define, but it cannot perceive temperature. The same goes for the second world, it can define or give examples of emotions like pleasure, but it can only simulate it. So I believe that ChatGPT is still no substitute for humans.
As for teachers, the core of our job is to accompany students and support them. Although ChatGPT may have done a better job than teachers in solving problems, it cannot accompany students to observe and experience the real world. So more than theory teaching, I will put more emphasis on how to get students to experience the process of learning in the future. - Hakan ErcanMiddle East Technical University, Professor of EconomicsI am curious about the advent of ChatGPT and how it will further develop. Right now, even though it got recently developed, it started to be integrated into the education system which pushes professors and students to change their perspective about education. Professors are finding new ways to use AI technologies in their lectures which creates a new and innovative education approach.
I have used it for personal reasons especially to examine the effectiveness of ChatGPT but I did not use it to create questions or teaching materials for my lessons. However I encourage my students to effectively use ChatGPT especially in my class. These types of technologies are the ones you cannot deny or restrict. There is no point in forbidding the students to use it. It would be Luddite reasoning.
Right not it is visible that ChatGPT is not that advanced yet in terms of the accuracy of answers. For example, when I asked ChatGPT to “List all the big empires in the history” it only listed the western ones and when I said “There are missing empires.” It only added a few more empires. It is clear that ChatGPT is a very Western biased tool at the moment. That is the reason why I encourage my students to use ChatGPT in their studies. Because there is a high possibility that it will give you wrong or lacking answers and it pushes the students to understand the topic and fix the problem by themselves.
The view of Deep Learning Professor
In this interview, I spoke with Professor Emre Akbaş, a renowned expert in the fields of computer vision, deep learning, and machine learning. Professor Akbaş teaches classes in these areas in METU and has a strong research interest in them as well.
- ChatGPT and many AI tools have become very famous these days, and suddenly they are accessible to everyone. As you know, a lot of students are using them to solve assignments, sometimes to help them learn and study. Does this pose a threat to the education system? How can you validate that the student's answers are their own?
- I think it's a threat, it's a problem, especially for entry-level courses. For example, Calculus I, which first-year students take around the world. The level of difficulty is so elementary that ChatGPT can solve any problem in that course, so that is a big problem. But as you move up towards the master's and PhD-level courses, ChatGPT is not very successful. The other week, I was curious about what ChatGPT would say about some research questions that we are studying, and it gave a nonsense answer. There are some pieces that made sense, and those pieces are like the repetition of information that is already on the web. It was like a parrot, repeating what was on the web, but when the question is a research question, when it's a hard question, it made stuff up. It's not the correct answer, it doesn't make sense, but it looks like a good answer, but it's not. So, in entry-level courses, it does very well, and it's a big problem in these courses. But then, as you move up to third year, fourth year, fifth, sixth, if you ask questions that force the students to synthesize new information, like comment on something, use your knowledge to think about something, then ChatGPT fails.
- But now we have the GPT-4 architecture, and it's a big step from GPT-3 (not that huge, but still better). In a few years, let's say we get GPT-6 or 7. What will happen at that point?
- Still, I don't think so. I haven't tried GPT-4, but I still think it will struggle to answer these questions because these kinds of questions don't have unique answers. We don't know the answers yet. We are tackling questions that we don't know the answer to, but we can verify whether the answer is correct or not. ChatGPT makes stuff up, and that's a dangerous thing because it brings a problem of discriminating between true knowledge and not true knowledge, and it's a big problem.
- Do you think ChatGPT can be considered a very good search engine?
- I think yes, I think we can think of it as a compressed version of the whole internet, and in that sense, it is a good search engine. But again, it doesn't have a way of telling whether what it is saying is true or not. It does not know that. So, you ask a question, it gives a sensible answer, and then you ask it to provide references or sources. It makes stuff up. For example, it says this is written in this paper by this author, published in this conference, but it does not exist.
- That's very interesting actually. I haven't heard about that before.
- Yeah, it makes it up, and it's very dangerous because if you use it as a source of knowledge, you fail. The problem is there is no way of telling if it's telling you the truth or if it is hallucinating.
- So, you have to read the paper yourself?
- At least search for it, see if it exists.
- So, the whole paper just does not exist, not that it exists and it paraphrased or changed the content of the paper?
- No, it doesn't exist, but it looks legit: the title, author, conference name. It all looks okay, but it doesn't exist.
- Very interesting. So, let's say we have something like an assignment whose first task is to read input from a file in the C programming language, which can be a tedious job. So, for these types of obsolete tasks where you don't need to think or apply an algorithm, it's more technical, like using an API of the library. Do you think for these tasks, it would be good for students or people in general who are programmers to use ChatGPT for these tasks to save time, to be more accurate, to not make small mistakes, or is it better to know them properly? Because usually, what we do is look up online how to read a file in C anyway from StackOverflow, so wouldn't it be better for ChatGPT to just provide us with the code?
- I think it will be useful in that task, and ChatGPT is a tool at the end, and it's a useful tool for certain tasks, and that task that you are describing, I think is one of them. But if you want to call yourself a programmer or a computer engineer, you should definitely know how things can be read from a file, but after that, you don't need to do it every time. It's a routine task, and those routine tasks can be tackled by tools like ChatGPT. There's no problem with that. In fact, there is a GitHub Copilot AI tool that helps you write code, so you give it a prompt in plain English, and it writes it for you or completes code for you. That's very useful.
- Do you think students should be allowed to use tools like GitHub Copilot?
- It's not about allowed or not. It's going to be a fact. It's a new tool that we have to incorporate. We should know that it exists, and people are using it, but then, in order to give a diploma or certification, we have the responsibility to say that this student, we are giving them the diploma, that student knows these things. So, the question of testing and giving exams is still there, but ChatGPT also can complicate these things, given that this term, we are doing online exams.
- So, regarding giving a diploma, if we know that a majority of students are using ChatGPT for an assignment, then students not using it are at a disadvantage, and we have an average, curve system, so in this case, it's unfair for the students who are trying not to use it. Not everyone has the same advantage. Not everyone can afford to get GitHub Copilot. How can we tackle such a problem?
- It's a tough problem, and the burden is on the evaluator, the instructor. If the configuration of the homework is such that you anticipate that students are going to use a tool like that, then you have to evaluate accordingly, and if that tool is allowed, I would make sure that everybody has access to the same things. Otherwise, it will be inequality, and that's not good. But then, in order to measure the knowledge or capability of the student, we should do classical exams where there are closed books, closed sources, or maybe even oral exams where there's no ChatGPT
Interesting facts about ChatGPT
You can write a book
Brett Schickler used Chat GPT to write a children's book and compose illustrations for it. The book told about a squirrel who found a gold coin and invested it in a business selling acorns. As a result, the squirrel became the richest animal in the forest.
You can earn extra money
Yao Huahua (a alias) earns pocket money by helping students sign up for ChatGPT accounts, charging $5 per account. It's well-known that Chinese students have to use a VPN to access foreign networks, so not every Chinese student has fair access to ChatGPT. She admitted that she took advantage of the "digital divide".
You can create art
Robbie Barrat, has used GPT-2 to generate text descriptions of images, and then used those descriptions to train a neural network to create new images based on the descriptions. The resulting images are often surreal and abstract, and the process of creating them blurs the line between human creativity and artificial intelligence.
THE CONCLUSION
Revolution is the driving force behind social and personal progress. Therefore, in the face of the emergence of ChatGPT and the potential negative effects that may follow, we students should look at it rationally and actively experiment and use the new technology, while focusing on developing our own 'uniqueness' as human beings.
prepared by
Ksenia Smirnova
Mao Lingxi
Beyzanur Körpınar
Nansy Ibrahim
for Russian Media and Journalism-2023
Mao Lingxi
Beyzanur Körpınar
Nansy Ibrahim
for Russian Media and Journalism-2023
