Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we work and learn. Increasingly sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) tools can competently complete tasks currently the remit of professional roles. Kay Hack and Charles Knight, from Advance HE’s Knowledge and Innovation team, consider the implications for the sector and the need for a nuanced response.
ChatGPT is a sophisticated chatbot capable of Generating new text through its Pre-training on vast amounts of human-written content. It uses natural language processing software to Transform this data to create text-like human writing with accurate grammar, punctuation and spelling. As the first self-taught text generation program ChatGPT can learn and adapt to the writing style of its user – representing a significant advance in the development of AI writing tools. It is just a single example of a range of AI tools coming to market.
The ability of ChatGPT to generate or summarise text, provide accurate responses to questions, write computer code and complete an array of other tasks commonly found in assignments, raises questions about the veracity of student work.
Since its launch in November 2022, academics from diverse subject areas have been ‘testing’ ChatGPT with exam questions and coursework - incidentally supplying more training data! The consensus view is that responses are broadly competent.
