ChatGPT’s rise to fame (and infamy) this year has everyone questioning how useful AI can be in their daily lives. It’s incredibly easy to look at ChatGPT as a useful tool that aims to advance your own academic work, but is this really the case? With around 180.5 million users, ChatGPT is in constant use.
From people using it for leisure to people using it to assist them in their work. It’s almost impossible to argue that ChatGPT and AI tools like it aren’t tempting to use, simply because they are. I’m sure everyone’s had a similar thought that using ChatGPT would just get rid of some of the pressures of academia.
Maybe you’ve even used an AI tool to write an essay. But the question is: is that truly your own work? When asked about the ethics of using AI tools within essays, one student at the University of Sussex (who wished to remain anonymous) said that “it’s similar to asking another person to do your work for you”.
When asked to write essays, AI tools essentially take the works of many academics, and compile them. It’s easy to see the issues this raises in terms of plagiarism. When you’re relying on an AI tool to help write your essays, it’s important to question what affects this has on you as a student.
While using AI, learning and education are dampened. As university students, most of us have chosen our specific subjects as we truly enjoy learning about them and enjoy working hard to achieve a high grade. Furthermore, by using AI we miss out on really coming to grips with academic literature.
Although some may see university as another step to a job, it is a privilege to access the knowledge obtained by centuries of academics whose motivation was little but passion. One Cardiff University student describes how using AI tools is “unfair to people who have to work hard and will do worse”. So, even if you do get that all-too-important first or 2.1 that you’ve been wanting, is it worth going the easy route and using an AI tool?
This raises important questions about academic complacency. We all use technology to enhance how we write our essays. From laptops and computers, to different apps and websites that enhance the writing experience.
But AI may just be taking the creativity out of academic work. With more and more uses, a student may just become reliant on these tools, losing out on valuable experience in higher education. It’s impossible to deny that AI and ChatGPT don’t have their uses.
Disregarding AI as a whole would be the wrong thing to do. They have their places within society. Fraud protection, healthcare, programming - all things that can be