This article was not written by ChatGPT

Professor Donna Pendergast

Director Engagement, Arts, Education and Law

The genie is out of the bottle

Launched in November last year, ChatGPT shocked the education community, being a brilliant example of innovative disruption, establishing itself where no equivalent previously existed. ChatGPT represents a shift because of its versatility, accessibility, responsiveness, speed, and ability to mimic and curate. Who hasn’t had a play with it yet? The ease of access is stunningly impressive.

The response in education circles has ranged from panic and shock, some systems banning it literally overnight; to seeing it as an opportunity, embracing it, actively encouraging experimentation and devising pedagogical approaches that promote critical investigation and exploration.  The latter is the position to which I subscribe. Let’s face it, the genie is out of the bottle. Rather than ban it, we need to consider how this tool might be of value in learning and how we can innovate, shifting some of the taken-for-granteds that shape how we traditionally do learning. And maybe, this might be a tool that will ease some of the demands on teachers, a possible panacea for the work intensification that plagues the profession. Importantly, we need to understand the limitations and biases that are inherent in the tool, and how this might reinforce and privilege dominant discourses, values and belief systems. One thing is for sure, the introduction of ChatGPT is a stunning insight into how advanced and powerful AI has become, and this has reignited questions of ethics, accessibility and equity; challenges education has yet to conquer.

Perhaps most unsettling is that ChatGPT raises the more confronting fear of the potential threat to humans of AI.  What was that HAL?

Professor Julian Meyrick

School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science

Yet another attempt to outsource a humanity we have yet to fully discover in ourselves.

From the eighteenth-century mechanical chess-playing Turk of the court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, to the malevolent interplanetary on-board computer, HAL, in 2001 A Space Odyssey, our fascination with constructing robotic versions of ourselves continues. ChatGPT’s technology might be new, but the ambition behind it is as old the legend of the golem.

It is, of course, no kind of intelligence at all. A key component of human cognition is emotion. There is a difference between knowing how to drive, and remembering how you learnt to drive. How your nearly crashed the family car. How you crunched the gears, until you didn’t. Without corresponding feelings of affection, dislike, remorse, aspiration and delight, AI is a glorified sorting machine of the kind philosopher John Searle described in his famous Chinese Room thought experiment.

One fear is that ChatGPT will write students’ essays for them. So far it seems unable to summarise material without committing fundamental errors, or simply making stuff up. In this it is probably more realistic than when its “reading function” is perfected.

Carl Sagan was right. The question is not whether there is intelligent life on other planets, but whether it exists on our own. Come to think of it, it is a good one to put to ChatGPT, to see if it displays that most indefinable but precious of all human acuities: a sense of humour.

Dr Wade Hadwen

School of Environment and Science

Plenty to gain, but what will we lose?

We’re at, if not already over, the crossroads with AI. The changes have been coming for some time, but ChatGPT has elevated the conversation to the point that it is now our reality. For me, ChatGPT is amazing, but I’m equal parts excited and terrified. I’m excited for the computational power that AI brings, especially for research and teaching – we’re realising new applications and opportunities every day and we can’t even imagine what we will be able to do with AI, or perhaps what it will be able to do without us, in a few years from now. I’m also terrified about what this might mean in terms of what we may lose. What will happen to human creativity and independent thought as AI takes on more and more of our tasks? I know ChatGPT can save us a lot of time, but as our reliance on AI grows, I wonder how quickly we will lose our own capacities to write, synthesise, interpret, think and create? At a time where the need for transformative approaches to the way we live and use the planet’s resources is paramount (we certainly cannot just rely on business as usual and the internet up to 2021!), we need empathy for people and the planet to help chart a new course. Can we afford to hand this over to AI? I’m looking forward to more society-wide ethical conversations around the use and boundaries for AI, in all aspects of our lives, because while the gains can be tremendous, so too can the losses.

Dr Johanna Nalau

School of Environment and Science

AI and the future of learning

Will platforms like ChatGPT lead to a loss of learning if we can get automated answers in a few seconds? Will it provide us with comprehensive answers without us having to search or analyse? While AI tools and techniques have potential to help us in sorting information better and faster, there is something that humans will keep excelling at: understanding the implicit and hidden foundational assumptions behind information and text. To understand why something has been written in a particular way demands critical analysis and a mind that is capable of seeing more than the words or spit out textbook answers. This capability should be a key area in our education systems: to question, to explore, not to accept standard answers as they are but keep asking why. That is where real innovation begins.

Associate Professor Katherine Main

School of Education and Professional Studies

ChatGPT will struggle in the hotbed of a real, live classroom

Student teachers learn the theory and then apply that theory in the classroom to develop the expertise necessary to become ‘classroom ready’. For some, ChatGPT may seem to be the path of least resistance and an easy way to navigate the written assignments that are a key part of understanding the theory. Good practice can only be replicated across contexts when it is underpinned by a strong theoretical foundation. Generally, the theory is multi-layered and includes aspects from neuroscience, developmentalism, and the curriculum and can be daunting to understand. Thus, learning to teach is a journey of ‘productive struggle’ that requires effort and develops perseverance as well as creative problem-solving skills. Teaching is an experiential profession and ChatGPT or any other AI platform cannot replace or replicate the problem solving that is required to make the approximately 1500 decisions teachers make on ‘the fly’ per day. They are constantly drawing on all their expertise and experience and applying it to their classroom context as they consider the students in their class.