ChatGPT was released to the world in November 2022. Within five days it had amassed 1 million users, and by January 2023, 13 million users were using the tool each day.

ChatGPT belongs to a family of Artificial Intelligence tools known as Generative AI, meaning it can generate new information.

You interact with ChatGPT in a conversational way, like a back-and-forth chat. You access it via a website where you simply type in a request and in a matter of seconds, a written response is generated. What is significant about ChatGPT is that it can generate very human like responses.

ChatGPT can be asked all sorts of questions and therefore generate all sorts of responses. It can write essays, speeches, stories, reviews, critiques, lesson plans, reports, recipes, poems and lyrics. It can generate travel plans, marketing material, social media content and articles. It can analyse data, solve mathematical equations, write and review computer code, solve problems and suggest methodologies for solving problems. It can answer NCEA exam questions convincingly and even passed a Wharton Business School MBA exam.

The quality of the prompt (the question you ask ChatGPT) plays an important role in determining the quality of the response. If you don’t like the response that ChatGPT generates, you can ask it to generate a new response, or provide it with feedback, and it will improve its response. And herein lies one of the amazing aspects of the tool: Not only does it generate impressive natural language responses which are pretty much indistinguishable from that of a human, but it is able to learn and improve its responses based on feedback from the user.

It is easy to see that ChatGPT could be used for nefarious purposes and it’s not without its implications. For example, ChatGPT does occasionally include factual errors in its responses, so we should not rely on it what it says as gospel, and review responses with a critical lens. It can also produce inappropriate and harmful content or material not suitable for young people, and the responses can include biases. So young people should always be supervised if using it.

But we cannot ignore the potential for this tool to be used to augment teaching and learning and we need to stress the importance of thinking and working through problems with our students. The skills of learning to think and thinking to learn have never been more important.

ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, a research organisation specialising in artificial intelligence. Until recently, OpenAI’s terms and conditions required users signing up to ChatGPT to be at least 18 years old. That changed about nine days ago and now the Ts and Cs state a 13-year-old is able to use their services. There are no real security checks to validate age when signing up.

Microsoft have invested over $10 billion into OpenAI and earlier in the year showcased how ChatGPT will be integrated into their products like Edge, Bing, PowerPoint, Teams, Word et al.

In a rush to compete, Google recently released their own generative AI chatbot, Bard, for testing. Expect to see this released to the public soon which may change the way we “Google”.

At Rangi Ruru we have been looking at these generative AI tools for some time. We have started to explore and discuss their potential practical applications and the implications of their presence in education.

• What does teaching and learning look like in the age of generative AI?
• How can these tools augment the great teaching and learning we provide?
• Under what conditions might we expect students to utilise these tools and if they do, what guidelines do we put in place? What is best practice?
• What are the ethical considerations around this technology use?

It has been interesting to see how educational bodies around the world are reacting to ChatGPT. Some states in Australia have banned it from the public education system. Some universities have also banned its use while others are intentionally designing it into their programmes of learning. The International Baccalaureate is allowing its use in essays.

One question to ask here is to what extent are students and teachers disadvantaged through banning compared to those with unhindered access.

The current version of ChatGPT is the worst it will ever be, and a new and improved version is just around the corner. We are not too sure what to expect, but it is important we continue to explore and learn about these emerging technologies, not only for their potential to improve teaching and learning, but so that we are doing all that we can to provide our students with the skill sets and tool sets to thrive in their futures.

Disclaimer: 100% of this article was written by a human.

If you are interested in discussing any of the ideas above, or would like to discuss how your daughter can learn more in the space of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, please reach out to me at o.flattery@rangiruru.school.nz.

Owen Flattery
Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship