Commentary
By now, most teachers have heard about ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence program with an uncanny ability to write clear, coherent, and compelling paragraphs about almost any topic under the sun.
Whether you need a 1,000-word essay (with references!) summarizing the history of Canada, a 500-word article extolling the virtues of your favourite city, or a 50-word tweet (with hashtags!) wishing everyone a good day, ChatGPT will provide it. An article or essay that once took hours to write can now be produced within seconds.
Of course, this has significant implications for schools. While teachers have always had to be on the lookout for students gaming the system, ChatGPT makes it nearly impossible to catch cheaters. Not only can ChatGPT produce different answers to the same question, but it can also be told to write in a particular style or even incorporate factual errors in any answer it produces. Thus, proving that a student cheated on an assignment is going to become very difficult indeed….