ChatGPT Takes Over Contract Cheating Jobs in Kenya
A new type of software called “generative intelligence” is changing the way we live our daily lives. It all started with ghostwriting, particularly in schools. The term “contract cheating” has risen in popularity as freelance writers from Kenya help American students with their schoolwork and university projects. Freelancers in Kenya have been making money from writing assignments for American students for the past nine years, with average monthly earnings in the range of $500-$1,000. The online gig economy in Kenya accounts for 1% of the world’s freelance workforce, second only to Egypt in Africa, according to the Online Labour Index (OLI).
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a new type of software that generates various types of content starting from text-type questions. The Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) was launched in chat form by OpenAI on November 2, 2022. This system is syntactic and partially semantic, and the innovation lies in the length of the correct text it can generate. ChatGPT generates fairly good software for each type, thanks to direct access to the service, which can integrate with other systems not initially foreseen, for example, the development of 3D artifacts.
These AI software programs are capable of writing long and coherent texts, and for this reason, they are part of the Large Language Models (LLMs) category. Until now, the released systems have been owned by a single company, as is the case with ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Bard (Google), and as it was with Midjourney images. However, the community of developers who create free software (open source) has been developed. M78 is on his way, an artificial intelligence more powerful than ChatGPT version 4 but free to use.
Contract Cheating in Kenya
Freelancers from Kenya are hired to help American students from the US, Tanzania, and other countries write essays and handle classwork. In the US, 17 states have banned contract cheating, but this led to nothing. In January 2023, more than 1,000 American students and over 100 educators were surveyed by online learning platform Study. The survey revealed that over 89% of the students said they had used ChatGPT for help with a homework assignment. Nearly half admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had used it to write an essay, and 22% had used it for outlining one.
The gold farming industry also began with Asian players in the gaming industry. The rise of “Asian Gold Farmers” sparked an industry where players from China could earn a living by playing MMORPGs and gathering exchangeable virtual currency and items, which they then sold to Western players through various platforms. This process is called gold farming and has been partially stopped in some online games with a number of both technical and legal modifications.
Copied Content and Human Responsibility
Since the invention of computer memory and cut-and-paste functions, digital copying has been readily available to everyone. Any article can be found through a search engine, translated using Google Translate, and pasted by hand. However, in a world where news is forwarded without being read, there is little reason to complain if the attendant goes from being an underpaid human to an automated one. As always, the problem lies not in the instrument but in the hands of humans.
