We're at an age where generative AI has been very helpful in many cases. It has certainly been both an advantage and a disadvantage in the academic scene. That has been proven in a survey showing that more than half of UK undergraduates have been utilizing AI tools for help.
College Students Using AI Chatbots
We all need help from time to time, especially if we need sources to support our points and arguments. Thanks to chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard, we can ask for information and the sources where they got it instead of manually searching for them ourselves.
We can even have the AI tools draft an entire essay for us. All we have to do is provide instructions and a topic. Undergraduates in the UK are well aware of this function, and 53% of them were using it, according to the survey conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute.
About 25% are using ChatGPT or Google Bard just for the suggestion of a topic, while about 12.5% use them to make content. A small 5% have admitted that they copied and pasted the entire generated content made by the chatbot, as mentioned in The Guardian.
A reader in intellectual property law at the University of Sussex, Dr. Andres Guadamuz said that institutions need to be more explicit in addressing the matter. His students would share how they would use the AI tools as he has mature conversations with them regarding generative AI.
The problem is not just with students shirking their academic responsibilities by completely relying on an AI chatbot's output. Some may not be aware that chatbots tend to hallucinate content, providing made-up results and sources.
Dr. Guadamuz expressed that his primary concern was this problem specifically, as well as the inaccuracies that can be generated by AI tools like ChatGPT. "I believe it is our responsibility as educators to address this issue directly."
While teachers need to create boundaries for how AI can be used, they can also use generative AI to help with the curriculum as well. Educators are already trying to use the technology to streamline their work with the help of the Education Endowment Foundation.
Secondary schools are being signed up for a new research project that will work on using AI to generate lesson plans and teaching materials, which would be easy enough if the chatbot is provided with the learning materials it should be based on.
The Dangers of AI in Academia
Hallucinations in AI are only part of the problem, but it is a significant one. One can learn from the lawyer who used ChatGPT to cite cases. As it turns out, the chatbot generated fake citations while using real examples of courts and judges. This led to a $5,000 fine.
AI tools are also known to spout copyrighted content without giving credit to the original creator, meaning that a student or teacher could end up using materials without the proper citations of sources, which is often if not always required in such sectors.
