A little more than six months after the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, Thomas Hatch begins a series of posts tracking articles about of the use of ChatGPT in schools by asking ChatGPT to generate its own summary the coverage so far. Future posts will focus on articles discussing the educational uses and misuses of ChatGPT, international perspectives on ChatGPT, and the potential of AI in education more broadly.
Like many people these days, I was hoping that ChatGPT might be able to do my job for me. So I asked it to: “Act like a journalist and write a newspaper article that provides an overview of articles about the use of Chat GPT in K-12 schools that have been written since it launched last year”. In return, I got my headline – Chat GPT: A Revolutionary Tool for K-12 Education – and a neat summary of the key reasons why ChatGPT “is proving to be a powerful tool for enhancing student engagement, promoting critical thinking, and improving academic outcomes in K-12 classrooms.”
One of the most significant benefits of Chat GPT, according to educators, is its ability to provide personalized learning experiences to students. By analyzing students’ responses to prompts and providing tailored feedback, Chat GPT can help students identify areas where they need additional support and provide them with resources to improve their understanding of the subject matter. As a result, students are more engaged in their learning, and they are more likely to succeed academically…” – Excerpt from Chat GPT: A Revolutionary Tool for K-12 Education, ChatGPT May 8, 2023
Wary of ChatGPT’s rosy assessment of its coverage in the press, I rephrased my question: Act like a journalist and write a newspaper article that provides an overview of articles about the critiques of using Chat GPT in K-12 schools that have been written since it launched last year. ChatGPT dutifully responded with an alternate headline – Critiques of Chat GPT in K-12 Education: Concerns Over Bias and Privacy – that still described itself as a promising tool “for enhancing student engagement and promoting critical thinking in K-12 classrooms,” but at least it noted some of the issues that have been raised about its use.
One of the primary concerns about Chat GPT is that the model may perpetuate bias and reinforce stereotypes. As an article in EdSurge notes, language models like Chat GPT are only as unbiased as the data that is used to train them. If the data contains biases, the model may replicate those biases in its responses. This can be particularly problematic in K-12 education, where the use of Chat GPT may unintentionally reinforce negative stereotypes or limit students’ opportunities based on their race, ethnicity, or gender… – Excerpt from Critiques of Chat GPT in K-12 Education: Concerns Over Bias and Privacy ChatGPT May 8, 2023
Eager to get a broader overview of the discussion of ChatGPT in the education press, I shifted to ask ChatGPT to generate what I thought would be a simple set of references: “Provide a list with the titles, authors, and sources and hyperlinks about the use and misuse of Chat GPT in K-12 education from online education publications” and I was pleased with the immediate, cheery, and efficient-looking response.
Certainly! Here are ten articles from online education publications that discuss the use and misuse of Chat GPT in K-12 education, along with their titles, authors, sources, and hyperlinks:
“AI Chatbots Are Coming to K–12: Will They Improve Student Learning or Take Jobs?” by Karen Johnson, EdTech Magazine, https://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2021/08/ai-chatbots-are-coming-k-12-will-they-improve-student-learning-or-take-jobs
“How AI Chatbots Can Transform K-12 Education and Improve Learning Outcomes” by Janice B. Rubin, eSchool News, https://www.eschoolnews.com/2021/03/15/how-ai-chatbots-can-transform-k-12-education-and-improve-learning-outcomes/
“Are AI-Powered Chatbots the Future of K-12 Education?” by Emily Tate, EdSurge, https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-05-17-are-ai-powered-chatbots-the-future-of-k-12-education
“AI in Education: The Risks and Opportunities of Chatbots” by Katie McPherson, eLearning Industry, https://elearningindustry.com/ai-education-risks-opportunities-chatbots
“AI and Education: What You Need to Know About Chatbots” by Matthew Lynch, The Edvocate, https://www.theedadvocate.org/ai-and-education-what-you-need-to-know-about-chatbots/
Scanning the titles, the list seemed like just what I wanted, until I started clicking on the hyperlinks and searching for the articles identified.
Results of a search for “AI Chatbots Are Coming to K–12: Will They Improve Student Learning or Take Jobs?” by Karen Johnson, EdTech Magazine
The links led nowhere and the searches revealed some possibly related articles, often by the author named in the list or from the source publication, but not articles with that exact title.
Similar searches for lists of articles on ChatGPT from “publications about education such as education week, the74, the New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters,” yielded similar results: Seemingly relevant articles with links to nowhere.
My final effort asking ChatGPT to “provide an overview of articles written about the use and misuse of Chat GPT in countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, or South America since the launch of Chat GPT last year” produced a concise summary of issues raised by the use of ChatGPT in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America and references to articles that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for:
In Africa, Chat GPT has been used to address the lack of access to quality education. An article published on Africa News titled “Kenyan edtech platform launches AI-powered learning assistant” by Peter Mwangangi discusses how a Kenyan edtech platform is using Chat GPT to provide personalized learning experiences for students. The article highlights how Chat GPT can help address the challenges of teacher shortages and improve learning outcomes for students.
In Asia, the use of Chat GPT in education has been gaining traction. An article published in the South China Morning Post titled “Artificial intelligence is revolutionising the classroom, but it comes at a cost” by Enid Tsui discusses how Chat GPT is being used in China to grade essays and provide feedback to students. The article also highlights the concerns of educators and parents about the potential misuse of Chat GPT in education.
Exactly what I was looking for? Somehow, after tracking numerous articles about Chat GPT’s use in schools, I’d never discovered ChatGPT’s tendency to generate fictional sources, though a quick search explained what I was seeing.
What you may not know about ChatGPT is that it has significant limitations as a reliable research assistant. One such limitation is that it has been known to fabricate or “hallucinate” (in machine learning terms) citations. These citations may sound legitimate and scholarly, but they are not real. It is important to note that AI can confidently generate responses without backing data much like a person under the influence of hallucinations can speak confidently without proper reasoning. ChatGPT and Fake Citations, Aaron Wellborn
The explanation for ChatGPT’s generation of fictional sources? ChatGPT does not have access to the internet, due to privacy and security concerns (Why Doesn’t ChatGPT Have Internet Access?). Instead, ChatGPT derives its responses from an enormous corpus of text data, “around 570GB of datasets, including web pages, books, and other sources (50 ChatGPT Statistics and Facts You Need to Know) . The bottom line? If you need something done… Next week, a non-random scan of (real) articles on the uses and misuses of ChatGPT in education.
– Thomas Hatch
International Education News 
Pingback: The Threat & Promise of Advanced Technology in Education: Reflections from the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory | International Education News