ChatGPT: Theft, laziness and academic dishonesty

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Since the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT service, academics and tech experts have expressed concern with its capabilities and use in and out of the classroom. All a person needs is a prompt and a Wi-Fi connection, and within a few seconds, a response appears. ChatGPT can write papers, answer assignment questions and generate text for virtually any prompt a user asks. Since it recently became so mainstream, lazy students have reaped the “benefits” the free cheating tool provides. 

ChatGPT works by analyzing billions of bits of data from across the internet to find patterns in grammar and information. When you enter a prompt, GPT identifies the subject and question and builds sentences in a way that it’s been trained to seem logical. At its core, GPT is a pattern identifier. After every word, GPT identifies the word that makes the most sense to follow, and from there builds a cohesive sentence that sounds good to the reader. 

The information that GPT produces is from sources across the internet. The data it was trained on includes books, articles, websites, scripts and other online writing. Work that was researched and written by others is skimmed, summarized and reworded into an intellectually vapid text. The “writing” produced by GPT is stolen, and when students use it, they are thieves. 

Using ChatGPT to complete assignments and write essays is worse than traditional plagiarism. Students come to college to get an education and become academically fulfilled. When students cheat, they are reducing their own capability to learn. Typing a prompt into GPT takes away the entire process of learning. Students who copy text from websites or books without citations are cheating, but at least they’re putting in some effort. 

The process of research and writing is not as simple as putting down words on paper. Writers learn more than what they include in the final product. When you research a topic, you can build links and stumble across other interests you may have otherwise been clueless to. The best ideas come from different starting points. Students become less intelligent when they fail to embrace that process. If you’re too lazy to do the work required to get a degree, you might as well drop out before you cheat.

While it’s undisputed that using ChatGPT to write essays or complete homework is cheating, some argue it’s okay to use it to “generate ideas” or do menial writing tasks. For the entirety of human history, we have relied on creative people to generate great ideas. The best art, literature and inventions were not spit out by a program; they were thought of by hardworking, deep-thinking innovators. If students increasingly rely on a computer to think, we’ll create a society deprived of creativity and intellect. Students who don’t want to put in the effort to even think are unlikely to put in the effort to write. 

Some argue that using ChatGPT to build an information basis is like using Google to find starting points for research. Search results on Google are like books in a library. You can peruse them, skim them, rate their validity and when they’re used, they can be cited. With ChatGPT, none of this can happen. All you get are logically sounding words without a way to find their source or judge their accuracy. 

A society reliant on ChatGPT will exacerbate the education divide. When students aren’t taught how to learn or enhance their creativity, they become unable to teach the next generations these essential skills. When only a select few at the top have intellectual abilities, we’ll fall back to the same pitfalls as the civilizations before us. 

Universities and institutions must create policies to deter and prevent students from engaging in destructive academic dishonesty. While it’s difficult to detect, investments are already being made to create software to flag content written with GPT. As security becomes more advanced, so will the destructive algorithms. Even if it means going back to paper and pencil, schools must ensure ChatGPT’s use is avoided.

Students who use ChatGPT, to any degree, are committing academic dishonesty and contributing to a society that is lazier, less intelligent and lacking in creativity. Universities’ policies should reflect this reality and penalize abusers to the fullest effect.