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Think twice before using chatgpt for help with homework.

This new AI tool talks a lot like a person — but still makes mistakes

ChatGPT is impressive and can be quite useful. It can help people write text, for instance, and code. However, “it’s not magic,” says Casey Fiesler. In fact, it often seems intelligent and confident while making mistakes — and sometimes parroting biases.

Glenn Harvey

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By Kathryn Hulick

February 16, 2023 at 6:30 am

“We need to talk,” Brett Vogelsinger said. A student had just asked for feedback on an essay. One paragraph stood out. Vogelsinger, a 9th-grade English teacher in Doylestown, Pa., realized that the student hadn’t written the piece himself. He had used ChatGPT. It’s a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool. It answers questions. It writes code. And it can generate long essays and stories.

The company OpenAI made ChatGPT available for free at the end of November 2022. Within a week, it had more than a million users. Other tech companies are racing to put out similar tools. Google launched Bard in early February. The AI company Anthropic is testing a new chatbot named Claude. And another AI company, DeepMind, is working on a bot called Sparrow.

ChatGPT marks the beginning of a new wave of AI that will disrupt education. Whether that’s a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

Some people have been using ChatGPT out of curiosity or for entertainment. I asked it to invent a silly excuse for not doing homework in the style of a medieval proclamation. In less than a second, it offered me: “Hark! Thy servant was beset by a horde of mischievous leprechauns, who didst steal mine quill and parchment, rendering me unable to complete mine homework.”

But students can also use it to cheat. When Stanford University’s student-run newspaper polled students at the university, 17 percent said they had used ChatGPT on assignments or exams during the end of 2022. Some admitted to submitting the chatbot’s writing as their own. For now, these students and others are probably getting away with cheating.

And that’s because ChatGPT does an excellent job. “It can outperform a lot of middle-school kids,” Vogelsinger says. He probably wouldn’t have known his student used it — except for one thing. “He copied and pasted the prompt,” says Vogelsinger.

This essay was still a work in progress. So Vogelsinger didn’t see this as cheating. Instead, he saw an opportunity. Now, the student is working with the AI to write that essay. It’s helping the student develop his writing and research skills.

“We’re color-coding,” says Vogelsinger. The parts the student writes are in green. Those parts that ChatGPT writes are in blue. Vogelsinger is helping the student pick and choose only a few sentences from the AI to keep. He’s allowing other students to collaborate with the tool as well. Most aren’t using it regularly, but a few kids really like it. Vogelsinger thinks it has helped them get started and to focus their ideas.

This story had a happy ending.

But at many schools and universities, educators are struggling with how to handle ChatGPT and other tools like it. In early January, New York City public schools banned ChatGPT on their devices and networks. They were worried about cheating. They also were concerned that the tool’s answers might not be accurate or safe. Many other school systems in the United States and elsewhere have followed suit.

Test yourself: Can you spot the ChatGPT answers in our quiz?

But some experts suspect that bots like ChatGPT could also be a great help to learners and workers everywhere. Like calculators for math or Google for facts, an AI chatbot makes something that once took time and effort much simpler and faster. With this tool, anyone can generate well-formed sentences and paragraphs — even entire pieces of writing.

How could a tool like this change the way we teach and learn?

The good, the bad and the weird

ChatGPT has wowed its users. “It’s so much more realistic than I thought a robot could be,” says Avani Rao. This high school sophomore lives in California. She hasn’t used the bot to do homework. But for fun, she’s prompted it to say creative or silly things. She asked it to explain addition, for instance, in the voice of an evil villain. Its answer is highly entertaining.

Tools like ChatGPT could help create a more equitable world for people who are trying to work in a second language or who struggle with composing sentences. Students could use ChatGPT like a coach to help improve their writing and grammar. Or it could explain difficult subjects. “It really will tutor you,” says Vogelsinger, who had one student come to him excited that ChatGPT had clearly outlined a concept from science class.

Teachers could use ChatGPT to help create lesson plans or activities — ones personalized to the needs or goals of specific students.

Several podcasts have had ChatGPT as a “guest” on the show. In 2023, two people are going to use an AI-powered chatbot like a lawyer. It will tell them what to say during their appearances in traffic court. The company that developed the bot is paying them to test the new tech. Their vision is a world in which legal help might be free.

@professorcasey Replying to @novshmozkapop #ChatGPT might be helpful but don’t ask it for help on your math homework. #openai #aiethics ♬ original sound – Professor Casey Fiesler

Xiaoming Zhai tested ChatGPT to see if it could write an academic paper . Zhai is an expert in science education at the University of Georgia in Athens. He was impressed with how easy it was to summarize knowledge and generate good writing using the tool. “It’s really amazing,” he says.

All of this sounds great. Still, some really big problems exist.

Most worryingly, ChatGPT and tools like it sometimes gets things very wrong. In an ad for Bard, the chatbot claimed that the James Webb Space Telescope took the very first picture of an exoplanet. That’s false. In a conversation posted on Twitter, ChatGPT said the fastest marine mammal was the peregrine falcon. A falcon, of course, is a bird and doesn’t live in the ocean.

ChatGPT can be “confidently wrong,” says Casey Fiesler. Its text, she notes, can contain “mistakes and bad information.” She is an expert in the ethics of technology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has made multiple TikTok videos about the pitfalls of ChatGPT .

Also, for now, all of the bot’s training data came from before a date in 2021. So its knowledge is out of date.

Finally, ChatGPT does not provide sources for its information. If asked for sources, it will make them up. It’s something Fiesler revealed in another video . Zhai discovered the exact same thing. When he asked ChatGPT for citations, it gave him sources that looked correct. In fact, they were bogus.

Zhai sees the tool as an assistant. He double-checked its information and decided how to structure the paper himself. If you use ChatGPT, be honest about it and verify its information, the experts all say.

Under the hood

ChatGPT’s mistakes make more sense if you know how it works. “It doesn’t reason. It doesn’t have ideas. It doesn’t have thoughts,” explains Emily M. Bender. She is a computational linguist who works at the University of Washington in Seattle. ChatGPT may sound a lot like a person, but it’s not one. It is an AI model developed using several types of machine learning .

The primary type is a large language model. This type of model learns to predict what words will come next in a sentence or phrase. It does this by churning through vast amounts of text. It places words and phrases into a 3-D map that represents their relationships to each other. Words that tend to appear together, like peanut butter and jelly, end up closer together in this map.

Before ChatGPT, OpenAI had made GPT3. This very large language model came out in 2020. It had trained on text containing an estimated 300 billion words. That text came from the internet and encyclopedias. It also included dialogue transcripts, essays, exams and much more, says Sasha Luccioni. She is a researcher at the company HuggingFace in Montreal, Canada. This company builds AI tools.

OpenAI improved upon GPT3 to create GPT3.5. This time, OpenAI added a new type of machine learning. It’s known as “reinforcement learning with human feedback.” That means people checked the AI’s responses. GPT3.5 learned to give more of those types of responses in the future. It also learned not to generate hurtful, biased or inappropriate responses. GPT3.5 essentially became a people-pleaser.

During ChatGPT’s development, OpenAI added even more safety rules to the model. As a result, the chatbot will refuse to talk about certain sensitive issues or information. But this also raises another issue: Whose values are being programmed into the bot, including what it is — or is not — allowed to talk about?

OpenAI is not offering exact details about how it developed and trained ChatGPT. The company has not released its code or training data. This disappoints Luccioni. “I want to know how it works in order to help make it better,” she says.

When asked to comment on this story, OpenAI provided a statement from an unnamed spokesperson. “We made ChatGPT available as a research preview to learn from real-world use, which we believe is a critical part of developing and deploying capable, safe AI systems,” the statement said. “We are constantly incorporating feedback and lessons learned.” Indeed, some early experimenters got the bot to say biased things about race and gender. OpenAI quickly patched the tool. It no longer responds the same way.

ChatGPT is not a finished product. It’s available for free right now because OpenAI needs data from the real world. The people who are using it right now are their guinea pigs. If you use it, notes Bender, “You are working for OpenAI for free.”

Humans vs robots

How good is ChatGPT at what it does? Catherine Gao is part of one team of researchers that is putting the tool to the test.

At the top of a research article published in a journal is an abstract. It summarizes the author’s findings. Gao’s group gathered 50 real abstracts from research papers in medical journals. Then they asked ChatGPT to generate fake abstracts based on the paper titles. The team asked people who review abstracts as part of their job to identify which were which .

The reviewers mistook roughly one in every three (32 percent) of the AI-generated abstracts as human-generated. “I was surprised by how realistic and convincing the generated abstracts were,” says Gao. She is a doctor and medical researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Ill.

In another study, Will Yeadon and his colleagues tested whether AI tools could pass a college exam . Yeadon is a physics teacher at Durham University in England. He picked an exam from a course that he teaches. The test asks students to write five short essays about physics and its history. Students who take the test have an average score of 71 percent, which he says is equivalent to an A in the United States.

Yeadon used a close cousin of ChatGPT, called davinci-003. It generated 10 sets of exam answers. Afterward, he and four other teachers graded them using their typical grading standards for students. The AI also scored an average of 71 percent. Unlike the human students, however, it had no very low or very high marks. It consistently wrote well, but not excellently. For students who regularly get bad grades in writing, Yeadon says, this AI “will write a better essay than you.”

These graders knew they were looking at AI work. In a follow-up study, Yeadon plans to use work from the AI and students and not tell the graders whose work they are looking at.

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Cheat-checking with AI

People may not always be able to tell if ChatGPT wrote something or not. Thankfully, other AI tools can help. These tools use machine learning to scan many examples of AI-generated text. After training this way, they can look at new text and tell you whether it was most likely composed by AI or a human.

Most free AI-detection tools were trained on older language models, so they don’t work as well for ChatGPT. Soon after ChatGPT came out, though, one college student spent his holiday break building a free tool to detect its work . It’s called GPTZero .

The company Originality.ai sells access to another up-to-date tool. Founder Jon Gillham says that in a test of 10,000 samples of text composed by GPT3, the tool tagged 94 percent of them correctly. When ChatGPT came out, his team tested a much smaller set of 20 samples that had been created by GPT3, GPT3.5 and ChatGPT. Here, Gillham says, “it tagged all of them as AI-generated. And it was 99 percent confident, on average.”

In addition, OpenAI says they are working on adding “digital watermarks” to AI-generated text. They haven’t said exactly what they mean by this. But Gillham explains one possibility. The AI ranks many different possible words when it is generating text. Say its developers told it to always choose the word ranked in third place rather than first place at specific places in its output. These words would act “like a fingerprint,” says Gillham.

The future of writing

Tools like ChatGPT are only going to improve with time. As they get better, people will have to adjust to a world in which computers can write for us. We’ve made these sorts of adjustments before. As high-school student Rao points out, Google was once seen as a threat to education because it made it possible to instantly look up any fact. We adapted by coming up with teaching and testing materials that don’t require students to memorize things.

Now that AI can generate essays, stories and code, teachers may once again have to rethink how they teach and test. That might mean preventing students from using AI. They could do this by making students work without access to technology. Or they might invite AI into the writing process, as Vogelsinger is doing. Concludes Rao, “We might have to shift our point of view about what’s cheating and what isn’t.”

Students will still have to learn to write without AI’s help. Kids still learn to do basic math even though they have calculators. Learning how math works helps us learn to think about math problems. In the same way, learning to write helps us learn to think about and express ideas.

Rao thinks that AI will not replace human-generated stories, articles and other texts. Why? She says: “The reason those things exist is not only because we want to read it but because we want to write it.” People will always want to make their voices heard. ChatGPT is a tool that could enhance and support our voices — as long as we use it with care.

Correction: Gillham’s comment on the 20 samples that his team tested has been corrected to show how confident his team’s AI-detection tool was in identifying text that had been AI-generated (not in how accurately it detected AI-generated text).

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Students are using ChatGPT to do their homework. Should schools ban AI tools, or embrace them?

The popular AI tool that generates convincing text in mere seconds is forcing teachers to rethink how they work.

Is the end of homework near? As new powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT take the Internet by storm, teachers concerned with AI-driven cheating are questioning their teaching and assessment methods.

ChatGPT, the most powerful AI language model ever developed by the company OpenAI, is capable of generating natural-sounding text on demand, including in a specific style or in several languages, in just a few seconds.

The quality of the copy it produces is sufficient to impress teachers in secondary and higher education, and even researchers.

"Young or not, we are all amazed at how quickly and relevantly it responds," Cécile Cathelin, a teacher at a high school in the French city of Tours, told Euronews Next.

• ChatGPT: Why the human-like AI chatbot suddenly has everyone talking

The use of AI tools in copywriting has sparked an outcry around the world. In the United States, public schools in New York and Seattle have decided to block ChatGPT from their devices and WiFi networks.

In France, the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris has also just announced a strict ban on its use. Cathelin says 80 to 90 per cent of her colleagues oppose these AI text generators, which they perceive as a cheating aid.

But experts question whether bans like these are really effective. On the one hand, students will always be able to access tools like ChatGPT through other means than school devices. On the other hand, some question the relevance of blocking access to a digital tool whose use is likely to grow in the professional world in the coming years.

"In a few years' time, students will be confronted with people who have had the right to use it, who have learned to do so and who have learned to what extent they can trust the tool or not," said Amélie Cordier, a lecturer in artificial intelligence (AI) at Lyon I University.

Alain Goudey, Associate Dean for Digital at the NEOMA Business School, echoes that sentiment.

If ChatGPT passes an exam, we need to change the exam

Beyond using or not using ChatGPT, he says the key challenge is to understand how these tools work and what their limits are - and to explain these to students, as it’s not because a text reads well that it’s accurate.

The machine algorithms behind ChatGPT have been trained “on a version of the world that boils down to the documents and web pages that the developers have given to the model,” Cordier explained. “And the notion of verifiable fact is very tenuous".

A text can therefore contain erroneous quotes and false information. OpenAI has yet to make public the data that was used to train the ChatGPT model.

• ChatGPT: Microsoft invests billions more in OpenAI as tech race with Google heats up around AI

ChatGPT, an opportunity to learn differently?

Goudey is now considering different scenarios for teachers to adjust to the reality of AI tools. One of them is to adapt assessment methods by setting up more in-class exams or oral presentations.

“If ChatGPT passes an exam, we need to change the exam," he told Euronews Next.

He drew a comparison with calculators, which did not end the teaching of mathematics and whose use is restricted by teachers' instructions.

That same analogy was used by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman in a recent interview with StrictlyVC. “I imagine this is a more extreme version of that, no doubt, but also the benefits of it are more extreme,” he argued.

We also hear a lot from teachers who are like, wow, this is like an unbelievable personal tutor for each kid

While teachers were “understandably nervous” about ChatGPT’s impact homework, “we also hear a lot from teachers who are like, wow, this is like an unbelievable personal tutor for each kid,” Altman said.

“Before Google came along, there was a bunch of things that we learned,” he added. “Memorising facts was really important and that changed. And now I think learning will change again, and we'll probably adapt faster than we think”.

• ChatGPT: AI will shape the world on a scale not seen since the iPhone revolution, says OpenAI boss

Working with ChatGPT, not against

Cathelin, who teaches French in secondary school, decided to integrate ChatGPT into her lessons in January. ChatGPT provides a first draft on a given assignment, which the students then have to enrich with their personal knowledge, in small groups.

She says ChatGPT also presents an opportunity to learn in a different way for children whose mother tongue is not French, or who have a disability.

For example, it can also produce a text with different language levels. It also has the advantage of generating recurrent syntactic structures. In fact, this is one of the distinguishing features that could help identify text generated by ChatGPT.

• ChatGPT: Is it possible to detect AI-generated text?

Cathelin started using ChatGPT in her personal time and subsequently "self-trained" to include it in her lessons.

She says an "educational pact" discussed with her students on how to work with these tools allows her to use them in class in a constructive way and in a trusting environment.

But Cathelin is a technology enthusiast. She admits it will be critical to find the time to train teachers, many of whom may be more reluctant, on these new and rapidly evolving AI tools.

"The digital transformation has not slowed down. In fact, it’s accelerating and it’s urgent to tackle these challenges and find appropriate ways to adapt our practices," Goudey said.

• DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney: How do AI art generators work, and should artists fear them?

OpenAI has already announced an even more advanced version of its algorithm, ChatGPT 4, but without giving a release date.

Cathelin and Cordier both note that students haven’t waited for ChatGPT to try to escape the chore of homework - whether by photocopying the library encyclopaedia, copy-pasting content from Wikipedia or enlisting their parents’ help.

"What is ultimately very important in the learning process is not so much the subject on which you learn, it's the methodology that you learn to develop around that subject," Cordier said.

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Professor of IT Ethics and Digital Rights, Bournemouth University

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Andy Phippen is a trustee of SWGfL

Bournemouth University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform launched by research company Open AI , can write an essay in response to a short prompt. It can perform mathematical equations – and show its working.

ChatGPT is a generative AI system: an algorithm that can generate new content from existing bodies of documents, images or audio when prompted with a description or question. It’s unsurprising concerns have emerged that young people are using ChatGPT and similar technology as a shortcut when doing their homework .

But banning students from using ChatGPT, or expecting teachers to scour homework for its use, would be shortsighted. Education has adapted to – and embraced – online technology for decades. The approach to generative AI should be no different.

The UK government has launched a consultation on the use of generative AI in education, following the publication of initial guidance on how schools might make best use of this technology.

In general, the advice is progressive and acknowledged the potential benefits of using these tools. It suggests that AI tools may have value in reducing teacher workload when producing teaching resources, marking, and in administrative tasks. But the guidance also states:

Schools and colleges may wish to review homework policies, to consider the approach to homework and other forms of unsupervised study as necessary to account for the availability of generative AI.

While little practical advice is offered on how to do this, the suggestion is that schools and colleges should consider the potential for cheating when students are using these tools.

Nothing new

Past research on student cheating suggested that students’ techniques were sophisticated and that they felt remorseful only if caught. They cheated because it was easy, especially with new online technologies.

But this research wasn’t investigating students’ use of Chat GPT or any kind of generative AI. It was conducted over 20 years ago , part of a body of literature that emerged at the turn of the century around the potential harm newly emerging internet search engines could do to student writing, homework and assessment.

We can look at past research to track the entry of new technologies into the classroom – and to infer the varying concerns about their use. In the 1990s, research explored the impact word processors might have on child literacy. It found that students writing on computers were more collaborative and focused on the task. In the 1970s , there were questions on the effect electronic calculators might have on children’s maths abilities.

In 2023, it would seem ludicrous to state that a child could not use a calculator, word processor or search engine in a homework task or piece of coursework. But the suspicion of new technology remains. It clouds the reality that emerging digital tools can be effective in supporting learning and developing crucial critical thinking and life skills.

Get on board

Punitive approaches and threats of detection make the use of such tools covert. A far more progressive position would be for teachers to embrace these technologies, learn how they work, and make this part of teaching on digital literacy, misinformation and critical thinking. This, in my experience , is what young people want from education on digital technology.

Children should learn the difference between acknowledging the use of these tools and claiming the work as their own. They should also learn whether – or not – to trust the information provided to them on the internet.

The educational charity SWGfL , of which I am a trustee, has recently launched an AI hub which provides further guidance on how to use these new tools in school settings. The charity also runs Project Evolve , a toolkit containing a large number of teaching resources around managing online information, which will help in these classroom discussions.

I expect to see generative AI tools being merged, eventually, into mainstream learning. Saying “do not use search engines” for an assignment is now ridiculous. The same might be said in the future about prohibitions on using generative AI.

Perhaps the homework that teachers set will be different. But as with search engines, word processors and calculators, schools are not going to be able to ignore their rapid advance. It is far better to embrace and adapt to change, rather than resisting (and failing to stop) it.

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current events conversation

What Students Are Saying About ChatGPT

Is this new chatbot the end of education as we know it? Or a useful new tool for learning? Teenagers weigh in.

By The Learning Network

By now you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, a powerful new artificial intelligence chatbot released to the public late last year that can craft jokes and working computer code, guess at medical diagnoses, and create text-based Harry Potter games.

And, yes, it can also write essays and solve problem sets, a fact that has “sent many educators into a panic,” notes Kevin Roose, a Times Tech columnist. Some school districts have already banned this new technology; others are attempting to teach students how to use it responsibly.

We invited teenagers to read Mr. Roose’s column and then tell us how they thought schools should respond to ChatGPT. Many came to the conclusion that the chatbot was a mighty, if at times unreliable, tool. Some worried that ChatGPT would rob them of their motivation, creativity and critical thinking; others that it would lead to widespread cheating. But several teenagers argued that A.I. is the future, and schools should embrace it rather than restrict it. At least one student thought all of this was an overreaction: “Everyone needs to chill out!” she wrote. “ChatGPT is certainly not the end of the world, nor the eradication of writing as a whole.”

Thank you to all those who weighed in this week, including students from Fort White High School in Fort White, Fla. ; Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Ill. ; Saint Peter High School in Saint Peter, Minn ; and the Anglo-American School of Sofia in Sofia, Bulgaria.

And a reminder that teenagers anywhere in the world can join our Current Events Conversation any time they like by responding to our daily writing prompts . We publish a selection of comments each week.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

ChatGPT is a powerful, if imperfect, tool.

My ninong recommended using ChatGPT, so I gave it a try. It was very powerful (it can write a sonnet about admission to Harvard, which I requested for fun) but inaccurate. Sometimes, ChatGPT kept changing its answers when I asked it the same question over and over. Nevertheless, I have never used it to answer my schoolwork or write my essays (I like to write, so I do that myself).

— Shekina, Philippines

I have never used ChatGPT, but I have used similar chatbots purely for exploration. When I used these chatbots I came to the conclusion that they aren’t very good at writing papers for the fact that they are very brief and often lack the level of knowledge required to write a paper on a certain topic. When you type in a prompt they just use very brief, filler words to write your response rather than actually use educated terms. I think the concept is decent but it needs to be very much advanced upon before it can be used frequently.

— Will, Saint Peter High School, MN

Personally yes, I used and experimented with ChatGPT and it is extremely useful for assignments. Not just because it answers all of your questions that you ask, but it completely destroys the use of tutors. However, it should be noted that it can be used productively but unethically because it is easier to cheat and just copy whatever the AI is providing.

— Kaden, VSN

ChatGPT is much less developed than the article here suggests. The AI uses language and sentence structure that a middle schooler would use. It could be a good inspiration tool for students who lack ideas for an essay and it could also be used in a way to teach students the proper essay structure and many more key basic things.

— Bozhidar, AAS Sofia

Some think A.I. has no place in education because it inhibits learning …

In almost all classes in school, ChatGPT should not be used. As it continues to get better and better, ChatGPT will be doing work that the student should do for them. For example, I could instead of writing this myself just have ChatGPT write this for me. How will teachers be able to know for sure that their students are actually learning what they think they are or is it just a robot doing their work for them? Students who do not use A.I. will also be affected. Instead of their lessons being centered around what mistakes the students actually make they will be based on what ChatGPT or another A.I. does.

— Henry, Glenbard West High School

I think schools should have ChatGPT blocked because it ruins the whole idea of schools. If you want to learn about something related to the assignment then you should probably resort to asking the teacher. The teacher is way more reliable than any internet source. ChatGPT can be helpful when you’re outside of school, on weekends and/or on summer break. It’s also important to know how to use real books and not always rely on the internet.

— Tim, Hinsdale Central High School

… and robs students of the motivation to do their work.

I personally believe that the use of chatbots and AI in school is dangerous for motivation and knowledge. Why write if a bot does it for me? Why learn when a bot does it better? I find this similar to the lack of motivation faced in math classes across the world when the portable calculator was invented and it is plausible that the same can happen in English classes if this AI is used; kids (especially high schoolers/teens) would love to generate their challenging assignments … Quite frankly I am terrified of ChatGPT’s growth among the younger generations, mainly for the intelligence and motivation of the kids, but also for the future of English as an art and skill to be learned, not generated.

— Jonathan, PACE High School, TX

Essentially the program is a cheat code for writing essays because all you have to do is insert a scenario and it will write for you. I think it is a bad thing for schools since students can become underdeveloped in their literacy skills — writing stories or essays — and would give people no incentive to learn and that would lead to them becoming lazy. In addition this is unfair to the teachers since they wouldn’t know if a student is cheating and they would essentially be grading an AI’s work instead of an actual humans.

— Sergio, Glenbard West High School

Students worry we’ll lose our creativity and critical thinking skills if we rely on chatbots.

One of my biggest worries is that I would rely too much on these tools and lose the capacity for critical and creative thought. I personally want to learn how to communicate myself clearly and to find my own distinctive voice. If I always rely on ChatGPT to generate material for me, I might not be challenged to improve as a writer. I’m also concerned that the information produced by ChatGPT might not be reliable or secure. As a student, I want to be able to trust the knowledge I’m gaining and avoid coming into contact with false information or damaging viewpoints.

— Faris, Hinsdale Central High School

A student’s use of generative AI to accomplish writing assignments is entirely counterproductive to the goals of an English class. As a receiver of the average American education, every English class I’ve been in has emphasized the importance of writing as a means of thinking. Indeed, to produce engaging and persuasive writing, students must learn how to research to understand a topic, thoughtfully take a position, and organize the information to be consumed. In English classes, students not only learn the grammar behind writing but also learn to become effective communicators. Communicators are how society learns to understand one another and share ideas that can help develop and change minds.

— Leslie, Ames High School

Others believe A.I. is the future and students need to get familiar with technology they’ll inevitably use someday.

It would be very unreasonable to students if their schools completely banned the tool of writing AIs. The reality is that these kids will be experiencing these AIs as they grow older, so the schools should introduce them to the students at a young age. As these students grow older and begin to work in the world, ChatGPT and other online writing AIs will be taking over. If these students are never taught about, and never learn how to operate ChatGPT in their schools, they will be unprepared for their life ahead, which will be filled with writing AIs.

— Whit, Byfield, MA

They said ChatGPT can actually aid learning.

I have used ChatGPT a number of times to test its capabilities. I was very impressed with its ability to write essays, including essays using sources. I understand that this would not necessarily be ideal for a school environment where students are meant to create their own essays and develop writing skills by doing so. However, it can also be used to give essay outlines, which I could see as being incredibly helpful for students. It also provides accurate information on historical situations, which allows for easy access to a reliable source for students.

— Rachel, Atrisco Heritage Academy

I’ve had experience using ChatGPT before and it’s been really helpful for me: When using it for personal questions, joke questions, or help on school assignments, it helps me gather research or understand the topic a lot better and faster … I also find it fun to experiment with, especially as a programmer. It’s given me new ideas and ways to think about code. However, I do think it’s important to fact check what it tells you since it’s not always accurate.

— Grange, Glenbard West High School

ChatGPT doesn’t allow for an accurate assessment of understanding. But when used on homework, something usually meant for learning and practice, it can allow a student to more clearly grasp the subject. If a student needs to look up an answer anyway, is it not far better to have a more convenient option that also very clearly explains the concept?

So when it’s assumed to be nothing more than a newer, better calculator, ChatGPT can hinder the assessment of prior learning. But when used as a learning and reinforcement tool itself, it can provide a wealth of otherwise inaccessible knowledge.

— Zac, Miami Country Day School, Florida

And that teachers should embrace this new technology …

If I was in charge of setting the rules regarding ChatGPT, I would try and make teachers implement the A.I. into their work, to allow students the ability to learn how to work alongside an A.I. and so that they won’t be tempted to cheat later on. Students have a lesser chance using ChatGPT to cheat when it’s not forbidden and is actually allowed.

— Ankitha, Cary High

People should look further into what ChatGPT can actually do because this artificial intelligence bot can do some pretty cool things. Some teachers can use this technology for making personal lesson plans for students so that they can be more successful. Or some teachers can use it to give highly detailed feedback on a student’s work.

— Sophia, Hinsdale Central High School

A teacher at my school recently asked her class to use ChatGPT to write papers on the novel they were reading in class. The students also wrote their own papers, and compared the results. I found this teaching method to be extremely accommodating and productive. Rather than framing ChatGPT as a way to cheat, and therefore encouraging students to secretly use the forbidden program, teachers can show their students how to use it to their advantage, while still keeping their own original ideas. In today’s world, technology is quickly becoming more intelligent, but I don’t think we have to fear it.

— Devin, New York

… while setting boundaries around how to use it.

Students can use ChatGPT to learn about new things, improve their vocabulary, and continue their learning when the teacher isn’t always there to help them. However, I do think its usage needs to be monitored very carefully, as students who use it as a way to get out of their work will end up falling behind in the classroom.

— Josh, Harvard Westlake

An easy tactic for schools to avoid the mess which is deciding whether to embrace or drop AI is to mandate hand-written, done-in-class assignments. This would help students develop handwriting (which is atrocious), quick thinking (as we will have a limited time to write), and fight back against procrastination.

— John, Northwest High School, Germantown, MD

I think that programs like ChatGPT are going to force teachers to change the way they assign homework. Doing more homework in class and less at home activities might help deter using AI generated work … doing more assignments that require students to talk and collaborate with other students will help counteract this.

— Noah, St Peter High School

Perhaps, though, our fears are overblown.

In my personal opinion, as a student who excels in English, (and who has never used ChatGPT in my life) I assert, to put it frankly, everyone needs to chill out! ChatGPT is certainly not the end of the world, nor the eradication of writing as a whole. Nearly all ChatGPT essays pass plagiarism tests, however, every ChatGPT fails the AI writing detection tests. Every. Single. Time. So I offer a simple solution: if you’re a teacher, after checking for plagiarism, copy and paste the essay into an AI writing detection test. It’s as simple as writing an essay with ChatGPT.

— Emilia, Illinois

Learn more about Current Events Conversation here and find all of our posts in this column .

More From Forbes

Educators battle plagiarism as 89% of students admit to using openai’s chatgpt for homework.

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Who's teaching who?

A large majority of students are already using ChatGPT for homework assignments, creating challenges around plagiarism , cheating, and learning. According to Wharton MBA Professor Christian Terwisch, ChatGPT would receive “a B or a B-” on an Ivy League MBA-level exam in operations management. Another professor at a Utah-based university asked ChatGPT to tweet in his voice - leading Professor Alex Lawrence to declare that “this is the greatest cheating tool ever invented”, according to the Wall Street Journal . The plagiarism potential is potent - so, is banning the tool a realistic solution?

New research from Study.com provides eye-opening insight into the educational impact of ChatGPT , an online tool that has a surprising mastery of learning and human language. INSIDER reports that researchers recently put ChatGPT through the United States Medical Licensing exam (the three-part exam used to qualify medical school students for residency - basically, a test to see if you can be a doctor). In a December report, ChatGPT “performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any training or reinforcement.” Lawrence, a professor from Weber State in Utah who tested via tweet, wrote a follow-up message to his students regarding the new platform from OpenAI: “I hope to inspire and educate you enough that you will want to learn how to leverage these tools, not just to learn to cheat better.” No word on how the students have responded so far.

Machines, tools and software have been making certain tasks easier for us for thousands of years. Are we about to outsource learning and education to artificial intelligence ? And what are the implications, beyond the classroom, if we do?

Considering that 90% of students are aware of ChatGPT, and 89% of survey respondents report that they have used the platform to help with a homework assignment, the application of OpenAI’s platform is already here. More from the survey:

• 48% of students admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had it write an essay, and 22% had it write an outline for a paper.
• 72% of college students believe that ChatGPT should be banned from their college's network. (New York, Seattle and Los Angeles have all blocked the service from their public school networks).
• 82% of college professors are aware of ChatGPT
• 72% of college professors who are aware of ChatGPT are concerned about its impact on cheating
• Over a third (34%) of all educators believe that ChatGPT should be banned in schools and universities, while 66% support students having access to it.
• Meanwhile, 5% of educators say that they have used ChatGPT to teach a class, and 7% have used the platform to create writing prompts.

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A teacher quoted anonymously in the Study.com survey shares, “'I love that students would have another resource to help answer questions. Do I worry some kids would abuse it? Yes. But they use Google and get answers without an explanation. It's my understanding that ChatGPT explains answers. That [explanation] would be more beneficial.” Or would it become a crutch?

Modern society has many options for transportation: cars, planes, trains, and even electric scooters all help us to get around. But these machines haven’t replaced the simple fact that walking and running (on your own) is really, really good for you. Electric bikes are fun, but pushing pedals on our own is where we find our fitness. Without movement comes malady. A sedentary life that relies solely on external mechanisms for transport is a recipe for atrophy, poor health, and even a shortened lifespan. Will ChatGPT create educational atrophy, the equivalent of an electric bicycle for our brains?

Of course, when calculators came into the classroom, many declared the decline of math skills would soon follow. Research conducted as recently as 2012 has proven this to be false. Calculators had no positive or negative effects on basic math skills.

But ChatGPT has already gone beyond the basics, passing medical exams and MBA-level tests. A brave new world is already here, with implications for cheating and plagiarism, to be sure. But an even deeper implication points to the very nature of learning itself, when ChatGPT has become a super-charged repository for what is perhaps the most human of all inventions: the synthesis of our language. (That same synthesis that sits atop Blooms Taxonomy - a revered pyramid of thinking, that outlines the path to higher learning ). Perhaps educators, students and even business leaders will discover something old is new again, from ChatGPT. That discovery? Seems Socrates was right: the key to strong education begins with asking the right questions. Especially if you are talking to a ‘bot.

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Incorporate STEM journalism in your classroom

Educator Guide: Homework Help? ChatGPT is Poised to Disrupt Education

• Artificial Intelligence
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About this guide

Playing around with ChatGPT is enormously fun, and the technology can be useful. But there are pitfalls too. In this Guide, students will learn about AI and the benefits and challenges posed by the chatbot.

This Guide Includes:

• Exercise type: Discussion
• Topic: Artificial Intelligence

Can AI fool you?

• Exercise type: Comprehension

What can ChatGPT really do?

Technology | We asked ChatGPT to do some homework. Here’s…

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Technology | sf giants’ jung hoo lee to undergo season-ending surgery, technology | we asked chatgpt to do some homework. here’s what we got, aside from it thinking san jose has stellar beaches, it didn’t do half bad..

The internet has been buzzing about ChatGPT , the artificial intelligence tool that can write essays, papers, poems — and just about anything a human can come up with — with a simple prompt.

Click here to read why Bay Area students are raving and teachers ranting about ChatGPT

We tested the platform ourselves — and aside from it thinking San Jose has stellar beaches, it didn’t do half bad.

Prompt: Write a poem about the San Francisco Bay Area. Time to complete: 24 seconds

The Bay Area, a land of mist and fog Where the Golden Gate Bridge stands proud and tall A symbol of the city, a beacon to all

From the hills of San Francisco, to the shores of Berkeley The Bay Area is a place of diversity

Where tech and art, blend seamlessly And cultures mingle, effortlessly

The Bay Area, a land of innovation Where ideas are born, and dreams take shape A place where the future is shaped

From the streets of Oakland, to the beaches of San Jose The Bay Area is a place of beauty

Where nature and city, coexist in harmony And the hustle and bustle, never cease to be

The Bay Area, a land of opportunity Where anything is possible, if you believe A place where dreams are achieved

So come and see, the Bay Area’s charm A place where anything is possible, if you have the heart A place where dreams can come true, and you’ll never be apart.

Prompt: How do you get a puppy to learn how to sit? Time to complete: 16 seconds

To teach a puppy to sit, you can use positive reinforcement training. This involves rewarding the puppy with a treat or praise when they perform the desired behavior. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

• Get your puppy’s attention by calling their name or making a noise.
• Hold a treat in front of their nose and move it above their head so they have to look up to see it.
• As the puppy’s bottom touches the ground, say “sit” or “good sit” and give them the treat.
• Repeat the process several times a day until the puppy starts to sit automatically when you say “sit” or make the hand signal.
• Once the puppy is consistently sitting, you can begin to phase out the treat rewards and give verbal praise or a petting instead.

It’s important to make sure that your training sessions are short and positive, with lots of praise and rewards. This will help your puppy to enjoy learning and make the process more effective.

Prompt: Explain string theory in simple terms. Time to complete: 12 seconds

String theory is a theoretical framework in physics that attempts to unify the fundamental forces of nature. It suggests that the smallest building blocks of matter are not particles, but tiny, one-dimensional “strings” that vibrate at different frequencies. These vibrations give rise to the different particles and forces in the universe, such as photons and gravity. String theory also predicts the existence of extra dimensions beyond the familiar three spatial dimensions and one time dimension of our everyday experience. In simple terms, String theory is an idea that the universe is made of tiny strings instead of tiny particles and these strings vibrate in different ways which creates the various particles and forces we see in the universe.

Prompt: Write an email to a parent who is concerned about their student’s grades dropping in the classroom. Time to complete: 33 seconds

Dear Parent,

I am writing to you regarding your concerns about your student’s grades dropping in my class. I understand that this can be a stressful and difficult time for both you and your child, and I want to assure you that I am here to help.

I have reviewed your child’s performance in my class and have noticed that they have been struggling in certain areas. I have spoken with your child, and we have discussed ways to improve their grades. We have set some goals and have established a plan to help them achieve those goals.

I would like to schedule a conference with you and your child to discuss their progress, answer any questions you may have, and come up with a plan together to help your child succeed. Please let me know a date and time that works for you and I will make sure to schedule the conference.

In the meantime, please encourage your child to take responsibility for their learning and to reach out to me if they need extra help or support. I am available for extra help during office hours and also encourage them to utilize any additional resources such as tutoring or study groups.

I am here to support your child and am committed to helping them succeed in the classroom. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further concerns or questions.

Sincerely, [Your Name]

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OpenAI, Reddit teaming in deal that will bring Reddit's content to ChatGPT

OpenAI and Reddit are teaming up in a deal that will bring the social media platform’s content to ChatGPT

OpenAI and Reddit are teaming up in a deal that will bring the social media platform's content to ChatGPT.

Share of Reddit surged more than 10% before the market open on Friday.

Reddit said in a blog post that the agreement will give OpenAI access to its data application programming interface, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from the platform.

Reddit users and moderators will also gain access to new artificial intelligence -powered features, and OpenAI will become a Reddit advertising partner.

“Reddit has become one of the internet’s largest open archives of authentic, relevant, and always up to date human conversations about anything and everything," Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a statement. "Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they’re looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit.”

Reddit said the deal is consistent with other content arrangements, and doesn't change its data API terms or developer terms, which say that content accessed through Reddit’s data API can't be used for commercial purposes without the platform's approval.

Reddit said that API access is still free for non-commercial usage under its published threshold.

“We are thrilled to partner with Reddit to enhance ChatGPT with uniquely timely and relevant information, and to explore the possibilities to enrich the Reddit experience with AI-powered features," Brad Lightcap, OpenAI chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Reddit made its debut on Wall Street in March, with investors pushing the value of the company close to $9 billion seconds after it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Reddit has a large audience that religiously visits the service to discuss a potpourri of subjects that range from silly memes to existential worries, as well as get recommendations from like-minded people.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accumulated a stake in Reddit as an early investor and it has made him one of the company’s biggest shareholders.

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Data dealings —

Openai will use reddit posts to train chatgpt under new deal, reddit has been eager to sell data from user posts..

Scharon Harding - May 17, 2024 9:18 pm UTC

Stuff posted on Reddit is getting incorporated into ChatGPT, Reddit and OpenAI announced on Thursday. The new partnership grants OpenAI access to Reddit’s Data API, giving the generative AI firm real-time access to Reddit posts.

Reddit content will be incorporated into ChatGPT "and new products," Reddit's blog post said. The social media firm claims the partnership will "enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics." OpenAI will also start advertising on Reddit.

The deal is similar to one that Reddit struck with Google in February that allows the tech giant to make "new ways to display Reddit content" and provide "more efficient ways to train models," Reddit said at the time. Neither Reddit nor OpenAI disclosed the financial terms of their partnership, but Reddit's partnership with Google was reportedly worth $60 million.

Under the OpenAI partnership, Reddit also gains access to OpenAI large language models (LLMs) to create features for Reddit, including its volunteer moderators.

Reddit’s data licensing push

The news comes about a year after Reddit launched an API war by starting to charge for access to its data API. This resulted in many beloved third-party Reddit apps closing and a massive user protest. Reddit, which would soon become a public company and hadn't turned a profit yet, said one of the reasons for the sudden change was to prevent AI firms from using Reddit content to train their LLMs for free.

Earlier this month, Reddit published a Public Content Policy stating: "Unfortunately, we see more and more commercial entities using unauthorized access or misusing authorized access to collect public data in bulk, including Reddit public content. Worse, these entities perceive they have no limitation on their usage of that data, and they do so with no regard for user rights or privacy, ignoring reasonable legal, safety, and user removal requests.

In its blog post on Thursday, Reddit said that deals like OpenAI's are part of an "open" Internet. It added that "part of being open means Reddit content needs to be accessible to those fostering human learning and researching ways to build community, belonging, and empowerment online."

Reddit has been vocal about its interest in pursuing data licensing deals as a core part of its business. Its building of AI partnerships sparks discourse around the use of user-generated content to fuel AI models without users being compensated and some potentially not considering that their social media posts would be used this way. OpenAI and Stack Overflow faced pushback earlier this month when integrating Stack Overflow content with ChatGPT. Some of Stack Overflow's user community responded by sabotaging their own posts .

OpenAI is also challenged to work with Reddit data that, like much of the Internet, can be filled with inaccuracies and inappropriate content. Some of the biggest opponents of Reddit's API rule changes were volunteer mods . Some have exited the platform since, and following the rule changes, Ars Technica spoke with long-time Redditors who were concerned about Reddit content quality moving forward.

Regardless, generative AI firms are keen to tap into Reddit's access to real-time conversations from a variety of people discussing a nearly endless range of topics. And Reddit seems equally eager to license the data from its users' posts.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder of Reddit.

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OpenAI, Reddit teaming in deal that will bring Reddit’s content to ChatGPT

FILE - Reddit Inc. signage is seen on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, prior to Reddit IPO, Thursday, March. 21, 2024. OpenAI and Reddit are teaming up in a deal that will bring the social media platform’s content to ChatGPT. Shares of Reddit jumped 17% before the market open on Friday, May 17. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

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OpenAI and Reddit are teaming up in a deal that will bring the social media platform’s content to ChatGPT.

Share of Reddit surged more than 10% before the market open on Friday.

Reddit said in a blog post that the agreement will give OpenAI access to its data application programming interface, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from the platform.

Reddit users and moderators will also gain access to new artificial intelligence-powered features, and OpenAI will become a Reddit advertising partner.

“Reddit has become one of the internet’s largest open archives of authentic, relevant, and always up to date human conversations about anything and everything,” Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said in a statement. “Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they’re looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit.”

Reddit said the deal is consistent with other content arrangements, and doesn’t change its data API terms or developer terms, which say that content accessed through Reddit’s data API can’t be used for commercial purposes without the platform’s approval.

Reddit said that API access is still free for non-commercial usage under its published threshold.

“We are thrilled to partner with Reddit to enhance ChatGPT with uniquely timely and relevant information, and to explore the possibilities to enrich the Reddit experience with AI-powered features,” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Reddit made its debut on Wall Street in March, with investors pushing the value of the company close to $9 billion seconds after it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Reddit has a large audience that religiously visits the service to discuss a potpourri of subjects that range from silly memes to existential worries, as well as get recommendations from like-minded people.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accumulated a stake in Reddit as an early investor and it has made him one of the company’s biggest shareholders.

ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT Plus: Is a paid subscription still worth it?

When  GPT-4  was OpenAI's most powerful artificial intelligence large language model (LLM), paying for a subscription to ChatGPT Plus— which costs $20 a month —made sense. But now that OpenAI announced the availability of GPT-4o, I'm not so sure. 

With this latest update, OpenAI revealed an omnimodel that makes GPT-4-level intelligence available for all, so you won't need a Plus subscription to access it. What's more, free users can now access features that were previously reserved for paid subscribers, including GPT Store access to use custom GPT bots; the Memory feature to give their conversations a sense of continuity; uploading photos and documents to discuss them with ChatGPT; browsing the web to give more current context; and advanced data analysis. 

Also: 6 ways OpenAI just supercharged ChatGPT for free users

These changes can make it hard to determine who will find free ChatGPT adequate and who should spring for a Plus subscription. As a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, I'll explain below in exactly which cases you should use one or the other. Once GPT-4o is widely available, I'll test it to see how it performs for free users and ChatGPT Plus subscribers and report if any further differences arise.

You should use ChatGPT Plus if...

1. you use chatgpt a lot more than the average user.

With GPT-4o giving free users many of the same capabilities that were only available behind a Plus subscription, the reasons to sign up for a monthly fee have dwindled but are not completely gone. Free ChatGPT users will be limited in the number of messages they can send with GPT-4o, depending on usage and demand; however, OpenAI doesn't specify that limit. 

Also:  Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot Pro: Is the subscription fee worth it?

OpenAI says ChatGPT will switch automatically to GPT-3.5 when free users reach their limit. ChatGPT Plus subscribers have five times the capacity of free users. Paid users will be able to ask GPT-4o five times as many questions as free users and will still have access to GPT-4 when they exceed their limit. We expect OpenAI will increase the limits for GPT-4o for both free and paid users. 

2. You can't wait

OpenAI says it is beginning to roll out GPT-4o to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and ChatGPT free users today, with Enterprise users coming soon. During the Spring Update live stream, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced that the new GPT-4o model and the rest of the updates will roll out iteratively to customers over the next few weeks. This means that only a fraction of ChatGPT users currently have access to the new features, with this number increasing shortly.

Also:  How to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus (and why you should)

If you don't want to wait until you get the new update in your account to use Plus features as a free subscriber, you can get a Plus subscription now to stave off the excitement. Note that you can cancel the subscription whenever you want.

ChatGPT Plus users still get early access to new features that OpenAI rolls out, including the new ChatGPT desktop app for macOS. This early access will soon include the new Voice Mode, which will roll out over the coming weeks. OpenAI will also launch a Windows version of the app later this year.

3. You want a tool to create charts and tables

ChatGPT is getting an upgraded data analysis feature that enables users to create interactive charts and tables from datasets. The upgrade also lets users upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, in addition to the option to browse for files on their local device. These new features will be available only in GPT-4o to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users.

Also: ChatGPT will put your data into interactive tables and charts with GPT-4o

With these capabilities, you could upload an entire research study to ChatGPT and ask it to generate a table with certain parameters ( always check that the info ChatGPT enters is correct). Then, you could click on a cell and ask ChatGPT a question about it or prompt it to create a pie chart. The pie chart, which would also be interactive, can be customized and downloaded for use in presentations and documents.   

You should use free ChatGPT if...

1. you don't want to pay a monthly fee.

When GPT-4o is available, ChatGPT users will no longer need a Plus subscription to access most of the features that initially attracted subscribers. OpenAI is making GPT-4o available to all users, whether they are paying or not. 

ChatGPT free users will be able to access the multimodal GPT-4o with GPT-4-level intelligence, get responses from the web, use advanced data analysis, upload files and photos to discuss with the chatbot, access custom GPTs in the GPT Store, and have more helpful experiences with Memory -- all of which used to be ChatGPT Plus benefits.

Also: The ChatGPT desktop app is more helpful than I expected - here's why and how to try it

Although it's unclear whether free users can generate images natively in GPT-4o (OpenAI did not disclose this during the event), free users will have access to GPT bots in the GPT Store. If DALL-E access remains a Plus feature, free users can still access the DALL-E bot in the GPT Store. 

2. You're a casual ChatGPT user

There is no need to upgrade to a ChatGPT Plus membership if you're just a casual user who doesn't reach the usage limits of GPT-4o. The new GPT-4o model is rolling out to ChatGPT free users with usage limits beginning today, but OpenAI hasn't specified this limit. Plus users will have a message limit that is five times greater than that of free users, with Team and Enterprise users getting even higher limits.

Also:  ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat vs. Google Bard: Which is the best AI chatbot?

If you're a free user who doesn't use ChatGPT often and stays within the usage limit, you wouldn't get much benefit from a ChatGPT Plus subscription now. I expect OpenAI will amend the subscription benefits or the price as time passes and GPT-4o becomes widely available.

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Copilot pro vs. chatgpt plus: which is ai chatbot is worth your $20 a month, chatgpt vs. copilot: which ai chatbot is better for you, the best business internet service providers.

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OpenAI GPT-4o: Top things you can do with the new AI chatbot

OpenAI left everyone agog earlier this week with a new and improved version of ChatGPT , the AI chatbot that has quickly become an essential helper for 100 million users.

Known as GPT-4o (the “o” stands for “omni”), the upgraded bot promises to be the Siri you’ve always dreamed of. It can sing, emote, instantly translate languages, identify the world in live videos, talk to you (and itself), and much, much more. 

At its core, the bot is a better, stronger, and faster variety of OpenAI’s flagship AI, GPT-4 . Although it has the same size brain as its predecessor, it can do a lot more with it, particularly when it comes to its text, audio and vision capabilities. Best of all, it will be made available to both free and paying ChatGPT users in the coming weeks, with its audio and video features coming later down the line.

When it eventually arrives on these shores, these are the top things you should try first:

What can you do with GPT-4o?

Here are some of the main use cases for GPT-4o, including those showcased by OpenAI during its recent demo event and examples from AI power users online.

A more “human” voice assistant

ChatGPT can now function as a fully-fledged voice assistant. Think of it like Alexa, if it was able to hold a free-flowing conversation based on what it can see and hear. But that’s not all. OpenAI has also tried to make the bot more human by allowing it to express different emotions and even identify how you’re feeling. In demos, the bot sang a bedtime story, sensed sarcasm and emulated it, accurately guessed that it was talking to an OpenAI employee from the company logo on their hoodie, and knew a person was smiling in a live video.

So eager was it to please, that some netizens even joked that they were developing feelings for the female-voiced bot . In an interview, OpenAI boss Sam Altman suggested that the bot will always be on-hand to help out, much like Siri, further signalling that this is the next generation of digital assistants. Based on your predilection for AI, you’ll either be enamoured or totally creeped out by it.

Prep for a work interview using multiple ChatGPTs

ChatGPT users are already asking it for career tips and advice on everything from writing a cover letter to improving their CV. In the near future, you’ll be able to take your prep work a step further by prompting the bot to give you tips on what to wear to an interview based on your appearance. The AI did just that in a demo, advising an OpenAI staffer to run a hand through his scruffy hair and ditch the bucket hat ahead of the big meeting.

Furthermore, with OpenAI previewing an impressive video-and-voice-powered interaction between a pair of bots, you may be able to enact an entire interview between two GPTs to get you primed for the big day. Of course, it will probably take a bit of leg work to set up, including lengthy instructions for the two bots, but it may be worth it if it lands you that dream gig.

Host work meetings

It seems ChatGPT will soon start popping up in many more places, including Zoom calls with your colleagues. The bot can apparently keep track of a meeting, identify what each attendee is talking about, direct the convo, and summarise the whole thing at the end.

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Its attention span will probably be governed by its context window, which refers to the amount of words it can digest when formulating a response. Notably, the demo for this perk was just two minutes, so it’s unclear how it will fare during lengthier meetings.

Now that OpenAI is launching a dedicated Mac app for ChatGPT , it could easily linger on your video calls. The digital assistant was also shown refereeing a rock, paper scissors game and could theoretically oversee other, simple pastimes as well. Just don’t tell it to watch over your kids as some social media users are advising.

Take an AI translator on your next holiday

OpenAI wants to make translating languages more seamless than the tools currently at our disposal (think image-recognition powerhouse Google Lens ).

In a slick demo, GPT-4o eavesdropped on a multilingual exchange between two people in Italian and English, translating as it went. As the speakers carefully enunciated their words, the whole thing felt a little staged, calling into question the bot’s real-life prowess.

For instance, will it be able to discern between different Italian dialects like Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Sardinian? Nevertheless, flashing it at a foreign menu that looks like gobbledegook could be a lifesaver.

Ask an AI tutor to help with homework

One of the biggest concerns that have surfaced since the overnight success of ChatGPT is its use in education . Some schools have even banned the bot for fear that students would use it to cheat on their homework .

So, not to ruffle any feathers, OpenAI seems to be focusing more on GPT-4o’s ability to act as a teaching aid rather than a wholesale essay writer. We were shown the bot helping a young lad with his geometry homework on an iPad, going back and forth using its vision and audio perks to guide him to a solution. In this segment, ChatGPT accurately interprets the boy’s drawings and responds with feedback in its typically positive demeanour.

The new feature may still alarm those who believe AI is out to take our jobs but, as a free learning tool, it will probably appeal to plenty of parents and children.

Web search, file uploads, data analysis

With the launch of GPT-4o, ChatGPT free users will finally get many of the premium features that were previously limited to monthly subscribers.

For instance, the bot will be able to fetch relevant, up-to-date information from the web using Microsoft’s Bing search engine . It will also have the power to turn your uploaded data into interactive tables and charts. More broadly, you’ll be able to instruct it to edit videos, images, documents and more . OpenAI says these advanced tools will arrive in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, some users have already shared the new ways they’re using its skillset, including to decipher ancient handwritten letters.

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OpenAI strikes deal to bring Reddit content to ChatGPT

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Take Five: The good, the bad and the ugly

Markets are hoping for evidence that will solidify a brightening global economic outlook, though rising trade tensions are casting a cloud, while G7 finance ministers gather in Italy.

Global equity funds experienced strong demand for the third consecutive week, in the seven days to May 15, bolstered by a softer U.S. jobs report and lower-than-expected inflation figures, which increased expectations that the Federal Reserve may begin cutting rates this year.

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Review: South Park's Take on ChatGPT

What happens when you ask AI to solve your problems? "Deep Learning," the fourth episode of  South Park 's 26th season, tries to answer that question in a meta way. It's an episode  about  ChatGPT whose ending was also written  by  ChatGPT.

The story begins with the boys, as many schoolkids now do, using generative AI software to help with homework assignments. Meanwhile, Stan begins using ChatGPT to text his girlfriend Wendy. While their unsuspecting teacher Mr. Garrison swoons over AI-generated texts from his husband, he also secretly uses AI to grade the boys' papers.

The episode pokes fun at the social norms developing around artificial intelligence: Everyone fudges their work a little, but they're all supposed to pretend that no one does. But if too many people rely on AI all the time, then the house of cards falls apart. Once South Park Elementary catches wind that some students are using ChatGPT, the school administration tries to ferret out the cheaters with a shaman. The results are about as accurate as real-life AI detection software.

Breaking the fourth wall, Stan asks ChatGPT to fix the boys' dilemma. And ChatGPT does it by producing an ending that feels like, well, a  South Park  episode written by AI. It's formulaic and it feels off, but it's just coherent enough to do the job.

The post Review: <i>South Park</i>'s Take on ChatGPT appeared first on Reason.com .

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