ChatGPT Has Changed Education Forever, Here’s What You Need to Know

When ChatGPT was first released to the public, it saw a massive spike in usership. When usage began to decline, people assumed that this was due to the AI losing its appeal and entering the trough of disillusionment. In spite of the fact that this is the case, it turns out that this dip was due to something else entirely: summer break. Students that had been using ChatGPT to help them do homework returned in September and usage went back up.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the LLM based chatbot might be changing education for good. Recently conducted interviews by Vox with several high school and college students as well as educators at various levels shows the various problems in terms of ChatGPT and its popularity among people that are learning.

The first major issue here is that some teachers think that ChatGPT can be used to cheat. This is certainly a pertinent concern because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing students to just generate answers to all of their questions. However, it bears mentioning that ChatGPT can also help students break down concepts and aid them in the learning process.

Of course, there is a problem with ChatGPT that needs to be discussed, namely that it doesn’t always present factual information. This raises the issue that students may end up learning the wrong things, and it is by no means the only concern that educators and students alike are having about this chatbot as of right now.

Another issue that is worth mentioning is that ChatGPT could be similar to Google Maps, in that it will make people too reliant on it and incapable of learning on their own. Google Maps is known to decrease spatial awareness, and that is a harmful outcome that could be orders of magnitude more severe in the case of ChatGPT since it would be concerned with multiple types of intelligence instead of just spatial awareness.

There are two types of learning that students can go for. One is passive learning, in which a student sits back and listens to an expert give a lecture, and the second option is called active learning, which involves groups of students trying to figure out a problem and only have an expert intervene when they need help.

Studies have shown that students largely prefer the first method, but the second method is proven to help them get better test scores with all things having been considered and taken into account. Using ChatGPT for learning will make active learning a thing of the past, and that is something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.