The University of Wollongong has issued a warning to students who are thinking about using ChatGPT to write their assessments as the artificial intelligence tool continues to take the internet by storm.
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UOW told students in an email seen by the Mercury that using AI tools to produce assignments is considered academic misconduct and may attract penalties.
"Academic integrity is a core value at UOW, and there is a requirement that all students will produce original work when completing assessments," the email sent last Friday said.
"This means that using any AI tool to assist in completing any type of university assessment unless you are permitted to do so is considered academic misconduct.
"UOW takes academic misconduct seriously and there are a range of penalties that may apply so it is very important that you make sure you understand how to work with academic integrity."
ChatGPT, a free (for now) AI platform launched on December 1 last year by American company OpenAI, has some claiming online it would rival or surpass Google as a search engine.
Asking the technology to describe itself, ChatGPT said it is: "A chatbot trained using GPT-3, which is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI.
"It can be used to create chatbots that can engage in natural conversations with users on a variety of topics."
Basically, you ask it any question and it generates human-like text. It is already being integrated into various fields including generating online listings in the real estate industry.
The implementation of ChatGPT in tertiary education is not completely out of bounds, with the UOW email adding that teachers may permit students to use AI tools to "compare or double-check your understanding of a topic".
"Be wary of their outputs, as AI tools are not always reliable and the information they produce may be inaccurate or wrong," the email went on.
"Contacting your teacher is the best place to seek clarification or double-check your understanding of a topic you did not completely understand."
UOW ruled out using ChatGPT or any AI tool to produce any "assessable work" as it will be considered plagiarism.
"Using AI tools to derive and submit responses to assignment questions in place of your own work is a form of plagiarism," the email said.
Can AI-generated text be detected as plagarism?
Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University, Sam Illingworth, believes there is potential for ChatGPT to be used to cheat on assessments due to its ability to generate human-like text.
"ChatGPT could be used to write entire assignments or essays, making it difficult to detect cheating," Assoc. Prof. Illingworth wrote in an article on The Conversation.
"The truth is, if I was looking at 200 pieces of work submitted by first-year undergraduate students on a topic, I would probably give ChatGPT's efforts a pass."
Assoc. Prof. Illingworth said the increasing capability and sophistication of AI tools provides an opportunity for educators to consider ways to design more "authentic" assessments.
"While there will always be a need for essays and written assignments - especially in the humanities, where they are essential to help students develop a critical voice - do we really need all students to be writing the same essays and responding to the same questions?" he said.
"Could we instead give them autonomy and agency and in doing so, help to make their assessments more interesting, inclusive and ultimately authentic?"
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