AI Chats and the Potential for Plagiarism
OpenAI released ChatGPT in early March, a language processing program driven by AI technology that provides a tool to engage in human-like conversations. This AI can answer questions in a human-like fashion and provide answers to any given topic. However, the potential for plagiarism is a concerning issue among educators.
Although the true nature of how students are using the AI is unsure, there are ways for teachers to combat the usage of AI plagiarism. The normal plagiarism software will not work on passages written by ChatGPT or any other AI. OpenAI has engineered a software to combat this problem called the GPT-2 Output Detector. The software can detect any passages written by any AI originating from OpenAI.
MHS English teacher, Amy Warren, expressed concerns about the use of ChatGPT as an academic source for essays. “There are already students who plagiarize, and that has been an issue for decades. I think ChatGPT will simply make plagiarism easier,” she said.
While Warren cannot see ChatGPT being a classroom tool at a high school level, she can still visualize it being used for other purposes. She said her husband once used it to create cartoon characters for a youth event at the church they attend. “It would probably be easier to incorporate it into education at the elementary level,” Warren said.
It is important to note that using ChatGPT to generate content for essays is unethical and goes against the principles of academic integrity. As Warren said, “Your essay is only as good as the support you use. As a student, you are not an expert in most fields you write about. The only reliable place to get good scholarly information is from an academic database.”
ChatGPT is not an academic database, and while the AI does get its information from unknown sources, scholarly or apprenticed, and the information may be true, the information it provides cannot be deemed as scholarly. Therefore, educators should encourage their students to create their original work using their ideas and knowledge.
