ANALYSIS | ChatGPT poses a threat to higher education

Last week i was assisting a Unisa student with his assignment and when we ran out of answers he opened "Nova ChatGPT" on his cellphone to seek assistance. The app is best known for its ability to generate answers in response to user input prompts. It generated answers within a minute and it got me feeling concerned with the future of higher education in this age of Artificial Intelligence. 

The introduction of generative AI has raised thorny questions about the definition of plagiarism and the future of academic integrity. Unlike in 2001 when Wikipedia was launched, the stakes are a little more complex now because the internet can think for itself. 

Asking students questions like: "Tell me in three sentences what is the Krebs cycle in chemistry?" Is not going to work anymore because ChatGPT will spit out a perfectly fine answer to that question. 

But there is hope. UNESCO recently gathered more than 40 educational ministers to develop policy guidelines on the use of generative AI in education and research which will be launched during Digital Learning Week next month in Paris.

While i welcome UNESCO'S policy guidelines initiative, i am still concerned with the threat that these new technologies pose to the basic principles of learning. I strongly believe that the fundamental goal of all learning is to develop thought. On the other hand, ChatGPT is part of a new wave of technologies that threaten to reduce our thinking and turn us into consumers of prepackaged ideas

The old-fashioned way of learning cultivated a pattern of deep attention that presuppose depth. ChatGPT does not stop us from thinking deep about a topic but they it does condition us to stop considering depth when dealing with a topic. It take away our ability to have an inner dialogue that is a necessary precondition for thinking and questioning.

ChatGPT can be put to creative use, they say, and even improve the writing of students. I respect this view and i too believe that we can put AI to good use. But in this article i focus on the concerns that i have around AI when it comes to education and learning. 











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