Generative AI Is here to stay, whether it scares us or not, and is improving. Last year, it was easy to spot AI-generated images; they usually had some deformities or looked in a certain way, but now it’s getting more real, just like Alec Couros mentioned and illustrated in the video; the first beer commercial looked absurd, the characters were deformed and creepy but a year after the videos have improved greatly and, now we can only foretell how real this videos would be in the future.
This technology has raised concerns about its possibilities and dangers. I think it would cause a lot of trouble in the future if not controlled; anyone with evil intentions can create deep fakes to indict someone else.
As an educator, CHATGPT is an AI tool I have explored and found helpful and instrumental to my class work. It is easy, direct and fast.
Please click on this link to learn more about my learning journey on CHATGPT. Sandra Vincent’s eportfolio
For this learning project, I ran a quiz test on CHATGPT for grade two students in English and maths. Dr. Alec, in the webinar presentation, had mentioned that maths doesn’t work well on CHATGPT, so as a curious learner, I thought to try out very basic maths questions by using this prompt ;
My result was an English and Maths quiz for grade two students that taught them types of shapes.
As I said earlier, CHATGPT makes the work easy both for the teacher and students.
Benefits of CHATGPT / Generative AI
SELF- LEARNING
Students can now self-learn and learn in their capacity and pace outside the classroom, it is almost like having a personal, or home tutor, the only difference is that they can’t get emotional support from AI.
RESEARCH MADE EASY – With this AI technology, you don’t have to dig through archives of books in the library down the street or in your school building to get information at your fingerprint. This is quite threatening to the existence of the traditional library system.
INSTANT FEEDBACK – AI can give students instant feedback on their work, allowing them to identify and correct mistakes quickly.
AUTOMATE REPETITIVE TASK. – Just like I generated a quiz with CHATGPT, AI can lessen the work for teachers by grading assignments and quizzes. I found a link to AI in the Classroom that talks about the pros and cons and the role of AI in the classroom.
DRAFT LESSON PLANS – Ben Talsma, in his blog, How teachers can harness CHATGPT for good highlighted the benefits of using CHATGPT to draft lesson plans. This would take off a lot of load from us teachers. He also argued that instead of being scared of AI, educators should take advantage of it and use it to teach students how to identify errors in AI-generated content.
Disbenefits Of Generative AI
REDUNDANCY: If students begin to rely so much on CHATGPT for schoolwork and generating reports and writing exercises, over time, they will lack the ability to think for themselves and be creative. In this article, Edward Tian voiced his fear of AI taking over writing.
I agree that AI-generated content detectors like Tian’s CHATGPTZERO and other tools that would come up should be used in schools to test students’ work for AI plagiarism; with this, teachers can control how students use this tool to learn.
Privacy and Security – AI that needs users’ personal information to help them track their learning process can be dangerous and misused for cyber crimes. If there are no measures to protect users’ privacy. I read about AI in the Classroom from this article, which talked more about AI’s pros, cons, and roles in the classroom.
Other ways to detect AI-generated content
Teachers and students can work together to decipher AI-generated content using the following methods manually;
Tone – AI-generated content lacks a distinct voice or style. They are usually void of emotions.
Lack of Depth
Repetitiveness
lack of Personal experience: I have noticed that most AI-generated content lacks a personal voice. The point of view is usually in the third person.
Disjointed sentence: Sometimes, the sentence doesn’t make sense together.
As someone who loves to express myself through writing, I am a bit skeptical about the advent of AI tools like CHATGPT, but then I am well assured that it can’t make me redundant because, like I always say, there is something a machine or robot can never have and that is the true emotions of a human mind. We were not taught to love or hate; these emotions came naturally. AI, like chalkboards and pens, are tools that we, as educators, should harness and use to our advantage.