With the recent spike of news covering ChatGPT, one could only imagine the complications that would come when this writing AI software app reached the classroom. The rising fear of cheating among teachers has caused panic not only for school boards, but students as well. 

ChatGPT is an AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, which launched in 2015. Since then, ChatGPT has gained popularity for just how many things it can do. The most interesting factor for users is the essays it can produce almost instantly. But this development raises the question: how could ChatGPT impact education in the future? 

ChatGPT does the work that could take a student hours. Not only is it easy to type up a topic for it to generate, but the free access makes it even more tempting because of its availability to students. So why is this an issue, and what can we do? ChatGPT’s work is hard to mark as plagiarism if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The structure of the writing it produces leans towards incoherence, which makes others more aware of its use. Darren Hick, an assistant professor of philosophy at Furman University in South Carolina, caught one of his students using the AI, and noticed some oddities right away. “The final red flag was how well-written it was. The essays that are plagiarized are pretty poorly written – the voice changes, the structure doesn’t work. It was an odd combination of flags I had never seen before,” he said. While ChatGTP may be able to come up with essays and articles, it has flaws that only a human could notice and write about. Another issue is determining whether “AI use” in the classroom is really AI. Due to on whether or not a piece of writing is an AI-generated text, a lot of students who write at a high intellectual level could be accused. If concerns increase, it’s possible that schools will shift to requiring students to hand write assignments. 

Many are now debating whether or not school systems should be banning or using this piece of technology. Since its debut in November, some of the largest school districts have banned ChatGPT. Teachers are concerned about how technology makes it so easy for students to cheat. There’s no getting rid of technology in the classroom setting, and there may be new variants of ChatGPT in the future. 

Technology is changing the structure and perhaps, integrity of education. Most teachers only use online work now instead of paper or textbooks. We may see a shift in the future of only technological usage in the classroom setting. With new methods and means of creating things such as ChatGPT, who knows what complications technology will create.