The academic world has mixed feelings about the use of ChatGPT, which some believe facilitates cheating. All the more so as teachers do not always recognise the output of this artificial intelligence tool, as shown by a study published in the journal PLOS One.
The authors of this research demonstrated this after using ChatGPT to answer a selection of exam questions, covering five modules taught as part of the psychology degree at the University of Reading (UK). The chatbot was used to produce different types of answers: short texts and longer essays.
At the same time, undergraduate psychology students had to answer the same questions, but at home. They were allowed to consult their notes and books for help, but were strictly forbidden from using ChatGPT for this assessment.
The answers generated by the AI tool, which represented an average of 5% of the total for each module, were submitted to the examiners. The examiners were unaware that the papers they had to mark included answers written by ChatGPT.
The researchers found that the examiners were, for the most part, unable to differentiate between “real” answers and those generated by AI. Only 6% of the answers produced by ChatGPT raised the suspicions of the examiners. Some even achieved better marks than those written by the psychology undergraduates.
Research co-author Peter Scarfe hopes the findings of this study will serve as a “wake-up call” for educators the world over.
“Many institutions have moved away from traditional exams to make assessment more inclusive. Our research shows it is of international importance to understand how AI will affect the integrity of educational assessment.
“We won’t necessarily go back fully to handwritten exams, but the global education sector will need to evolve in the face of AI,” he said in a news release.
Many universities around the world have taken steps to regulate the use of AI: some have banned it, while others see the technology more as a learning tool. But generally, the world of education has not yet grasped this issue, to the extent that Unesco published guidance for generative AI in education and research last year.
Through this document, the UN organisation calls on governments to rapidly regulate the use of AI in education, so this technology can serve as an opportunity for human development rather than a source of damage and harm.