Teachers have expressed concern about the impact on teaching of large language models – as exemplified by ChatGPT – and whether schools are adequately prepared.
Research from IT industry body BCS finds that 62% of computing teachers believe that chatbots will make it more difficult to mark pupils’ work. Some 56% of the 124 people surveyed indicated that their school had not yet done anything to prepare for these challenges. Just 11% said that a plan was being drawn up, while 33% said discussions on the matter had begun.
Having been made freely publicly available in recent months as part of a testing exercise, the ChatGPT program from Silicon Valley firm OpenAI has attracted much attention for its reported accuracy in creating letters, poems, and stories – and essays.
Minister for the school system Baroness Barran recently indicated that the Department for Education is reviewing the potential dangers posed by large language models – but also believes that they could offer benefits to the education sector.
