Dark side of ChatGPT: College students WARNED against using the AI

Students all over India are being told to not use AI tools such as ChatGPT for assignments and projects.

A growing concern around the usage of ChatGPT by college students has led to colleges taking strict measures. (Pexels)

Ever since the advent of ChatGPT in November 2022, it has taken the world by a storm. The chatbot program which is based on the deep language learning architecture of GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), people have been using it for various purposes, from finding inspiration for a creative piece to getting a quick answer on a niche topic. However, colleges are not happy with students using the AI tool for their assignments and projects. And now, they are resorting to strict measures to stop its usage for academic purposes.

As per a report by Livemint, many colleges have issued warnings to students against using AI tools to complete their submissions. A notice seen at Bengaluru's RV University by the dean of the School of Computer Science and Engineering read, “AI (artificial intelligence) agents such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot or Blackbox should not be used when original submission is expected from students or faculty, such as code in the first-year programming course or original essays, answers to questions etc”.

Colleges growing wary of ChatGPT

RV University is not the only college to have done that. Colleges all over the country are preparing rules that exclusively ban any works submitted by the student which has content taken from AI tools.

The problem is a serious one as these platforms not only explain highly specific topics in detail but are also able to generate content with different styles of writing, making it hard to be picked by plagiarism checkers. This gives a shortcut to students to not really study or understand the subject matter of the assignment and instead simply get it done by artificial intelligence.

Notably, there are some precautions built on ChatGPT to discourage its usage for official submissions. During an interaction with the platform, it told us, “It is not appropriate to copy and paste my words or any other source's words into your assignment without proper citation. Plagiarism, which is presenting someone else's work as your own, is a serious academic offense that can result in failure of the assignment or even expulsion from school”.

However, the people behind the platform believe it is not really possible to stop students from using it for their homework. During an interview with StrictlyVC, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which is behind ChatGPT, said, “There may be ways we can help teachers be a little more likely to detect output of a GPT-like system. But honestly, a determined person will get around them. Generative text is something we all need to adapt to. We adapted to calculators and changed what we tested for in math class, I imagine. This is a more extreme version of that, no doubt, but also the benefits of it are more extreme, as well”.