Artificial Intelligence (AI) based ChatBot called ChatGPT has become an overnight sensation. With over one million users in less than a week since its release on 30th of November 2022, the ChatGPT is attracting an estimated 96-Million visitors per month.
Developed by OpenAI-an Artificial Intelligence research company, the language model has gained massive popularity over a very short span of time.
It has opened new horizons and possibilities owing to its capabilities that it can answer questions, write essays, computer codes and perform a variety of other functions.
While there are concerns around its drawbacks and misuse, the excitement around ChatGPT continues. The worrying thing is that some people are using it as a truth oracle which is a flawed way to use a predictive text generator.
The academia is discussing its ethical implications as to how it could be misused by students to avoid learning. Technology is simply a tool that needs to be utilized properly. Like any other technology, ChatGPT has all kinds of potential advantages as well as pitfalls. At the end of the day what really matters is how best and judiciously we use these technologies.
ChatGPT has the potential to transform our lives impacting jobs and industries. It may take away certain jobs but open up new exciting avenues. It has potential applications in education, healthcare, financial services and other variety of industries including social media, customer service etc.
While exploring the benefits of this language model, this tool can write articles, computer codes/programs, make presentations, prepare assignment/summaries and translate text from one language to another.
The students can do home work, write essays, get advice and suggestions. The Bot can craft poems, write fictional stories, compose music, lyrics with plausible sentences that are grammatically correct and intelligent.
It can be designed to perform a variety of other functions such as automating repetitive tasks, to provide more everyday convenience and reduce tedious manual work. All you need to do is to create an account on the OpenAI website or login and access directly ChatGPT.
Type any question you can think of in the textbox of ChatGPT page, you will get compact answer in raw text. To get correct answers, you have to rephrase your question slightly. One of the fascinating things about the language model is that it responds to our queries convincingly in a human-friendly style.
There is nothing like magic involved in the design of ChatGPT. The model is programmed to answer common questions but it doesn’t know what is true. It does not have feelings, emotions or personal opinions and is not capable of forming an original thought or do anything unfamiliar. It can give you wrong answers and misleading impression and repeat same answers if we slightly adjust the question.
Chatbots, the bot (short for robot) are scripts/software have been a source of interest for years to companies looking for ways to help customers on AI that performs automated tasks. The Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) is state-of-the-art language processing AI optimized for generating human-like text with wide range of applications in a conversational style.
The language model is based on machine learning algorithms and is trained on a large amount of text data beforehand that can then be fine-tuned for specific tasks. Based on patterns and correlations learned from their training data, it allows the model to understand and see the best way to articulate an answer in the text form.
There are experts who proclaim that ChatGPT would completely disrupt Google search engine in a few years time. The Google search engine uses a variety of data sources, including websites, books, and user-generated latest information and has over a hundred billion web pages indexed in its database.
With such a massive database, using advanced complex algorithms Google search engine supplies comprehensive and relevant answers with links and citations of websites in split seconds.
Google has already built Chatbots and large language models of its own and uses AI extensively in Google search besides it has so many features like graphics, audio and video. In comparison, ChatGPT is piece of software designed to generate answers from a limited data available upto 2022. It is not connected with internet to browse information from Google or any other search and present information in real-time.
Therefore you cannot get any latest or reliable information say on flight’s schedule, weather update or what conspired in 2022. But we have to wait a little when this language model is connected with internet it will do wonders.
Artificial Intelligence has enormous potential to revolutionize our education sector. The use of ChaGPT may just be the key to unlock effective learning strategies for greater achievements of students that we need to explore. ChatGPT is a wonderful tool for enhancing knowledge, prioritizing learning which can promote academic and intellectual growth.
Using their creative thinking and problem-solving skills with AI, the students can perform quality works. By asking questions to ChatGPT, the students can involve themselves in discussions that can lead to deeper understanding of the course content.
The tool can help students for more clarification of concepts by providing explanations and answering questions that can save time for teachers who may exert for further academic excellence. ChatGPT can give suggestions for writing, grammar/vocabulary, helping students improve their writing efficiency, effectiveness and communication.
It can facilitate group projects, collaboration and brainstorming, organising ideas to generate creative content and assist in scientific research. The scholars can create unique poems, prose and compose music with plausible sentences that are grammatically correct and intelligent which can further widen their intellect. The key is that we use the technology in tandem with human expertise but not as a substitute.
The academia is deeply concerned about the use of ChatGPT in our institutions and how it could be misused by the students. They believe that instead of spending time to study the material, the students would rely on ChatGPT to finish assignments without actively learning the topic and later pass it off as their own creation.
This could make the true learning a mockery. ChatGPT is trained on data that may contain bias that can result in biased/misleading outputs. There are apprehensions that this could be used to further the spread of misinformation particularly in the scientific world through plagiarism which shall have serious repercussions.
There are hackers who can easily use the Chatbots for phishing and launching cyber attacks that can spread malware and destroy all research works. Using this tool for cheating purposes goes against the principles of academic integrity and is not in line with the intended purpose of this language model.
No doubt there are significant limitations and drawbacks that are crucial to acknowledge and the students have to understand that the bot is only a tool and not a complete dependency for educational purposes. Before searching any knowledge in Google or ChatGPT, the students need to have some basic understanding about the topics otherwise they could be tricked. They need to critically evaluate and verify information from original sources.
If we go back and recall that at one point of time we used to have hard copies of encyclopaedia entries and calculators at our homes. When Google, Wikipedia and the Internet came on the scene, it was being debated that it will ruin the education sector.
Today, yet again ChatGPT has brought to the fore the same hopes and fears. All in all, the technologies have considerably changed our living style and quality of our life. The advances in ChatGPT are futuristic and experimental methods of learning that has the potential to replace our outdated and ineffective strategies.
It is time is embrace these powerful AI bots, optimise their potential and try to get the best out of them. It can add more colour and detail to our learning and improve our education.
The author is a college Principal
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.