Lecturers urged to review threat from AI essay tool

The Guardian 17 January 2023

Lecturers at United Kingdom universities have been urged to review the way in which their courses are assessed amid concerns that students are already using a potent new artificial intelligence (AI) tool capable of producing high-quality essays with minimal human input, writes Sally Weale for The Guardian.

ChatGPT, the latest chatbot from OpenAI, founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and others, has only been publicly available for a matter of weeks, but has already triggered concerns about the potential for hard-to-detect plagiarism and questions about the validity of the essay as a future form of assessment. It has been described as “a gamechanger” that will prove a challenge in universities and schools. Though GCSE and A-level courses are assessed through traditional end-of-course examinations, experts are concerned pupils who use the technology to do their homework will become dependent on AI-generated answers without acquiring the knowledge and skills they need.

Working groups have been set up in university departments to assess the challenge of this latest iteration of AI text-generating technology, with the expectation that methods of assessment in certain courses will have to be updated. Experts admit to feeling both excited and alarmed.
Full report on The Guardian site

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