What are the pros and cons of chatGPT for students?
- It provides convenient and accessible information for students.
- It adapts to a student’s level of understanding.
- It saves time by providing quick answers to questions.
- It can improve language skills and comprehension.
- It could encourage plagiarism.
- It could contain inaccurate and even false information
- It could make students overly dependent on technology.
- It lacks human interaction.
ChatGPT is an AI-powered natural language processing (NLP) tool that uses machine learning to generate responses based on the prompts or questions it receives. Because of its accessibility, it’s an easy tool for students to use for school. However, this presents a number of pros and cons to the student and to the teacher. In this article, we discuss chatGPT’s benefits and dangers.
Benefits of ChatGPT for Students
The benefits of chatGPT range from being efficient and accessible, adapting to a student’s level of understanding, and even improving their language skills.
It Provides Convenient and Accessible Information for Students
Like a search engine, chatGPT has access to the world wide web and can scour its contents for the information requested. Unlike a search engine, chatGPT provides this answer immediately—no need for users to look through websites themselves, compile multiple sources, or deal with pesky translations, inconsistent data, and the like.
Additionally, since this is an Internet-powered resource, it’s available anywhere, anytime, and on any device as long as the user is connected. That means that everyone has access to the same data, and thus is on the same page.
It Adapts to a Student’s Level of Understanding
The more that a user interacts with chatGPT, the more the language model can generate responses that match the user’s tone and level of understanding.
Context and previous interactions with chatGPT give it an “understanding” of how you converse so that it can interact with you in a way that is more natural-sounding and relevant to the inquiry you have.
This is particularly helpful for students of all ages. If they are all exposed to the same data, there are chances that younger or less able students will have a harder time comprehending. Fortunately, chatGPT adjusts to the user’s needs.
It Saves Time by Providing Quick Answers to Questions
Arguably the best thing about chatGPT is how promptly it answers questions, giving straightforward, concise, and almost immediate responses. Not only does this help students get what they need at the soonest time, but it also teaches them the habit of going straight to the point and not beating around the bush when answering questions.
It Can Improve Language Skills and Comprehension
As a person, especially a student, continues to use chatGPT, they can develop their language skills. Those who have trouble speaking English, for example, can ask chatGPT to translate for them. Those who need help explaining what they mean in words can ask for succinct and tone-specific ways to say what they want to.
Most of all, as they use chatGPT over time, impressionable students can develop a similar language tone and style to the AI.
Disadvantages of ChatGPT for Students
The disadvantages of chatGPT include encouraging plagiarism and providing inaccurate information, fostering a dependence on technology, and lacking the empathy of true human interaction.
It Could Encourage Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s words and presenting them as your own. Because it’s so easy to come up with full essays, articles, and other written works through chatGPT, it’s just as easy for students to claim that they wrote it themselves.
To prevent this, some software is available for teachers to check for AI-generated content. Educators should also take the time to learn about this AI tool and understand how it works to see how their students could be using it.
On top of that, different schools can also provide classes on how to use this tool responsibly to aid in learning.
It could contain inaccurate and even false information
ChatGPT itself states that it has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021. Besides that, it’s always good practice to double-check the information chatGPT provides since it may not be 100% accurate.
If students depend on chatGPT, they have to be aware that they cannot take all its information at face value. Instead, they still need to verify the accuracy of these results.
It Could Make Students Overly Dependent on Technology
ChatGPT is a site that does all the work for you, so there’s very little left for students to do with regard to their homework, essays, or other written work. This can foster an attitude of laziness or a disregard for hard work.
It’s always best to make sure your students value dedication and perseverance when it comes to doing work, no matter what shortcuts are available to them.
It Lacks Human Interaction
Finally, one of the key disadvantages of chatGPT and other technologies is that it lacks the empathy that human respondents do.
While humans don’t give perfect answers, they can provide something that no computer can: they can relate to the person asking the question. This is something all computer systems and technologies lack.
Key Takeaway
As you can see, there are a number of chatGPT benefits and dangers that students and most especially the academe need to be aware of. Because it can be used by anyone and everyone, it’s easily taken advantage of and misused. Therefore, educators should take extra care to teach their students the value of honesty, hard work, and true research practices to ensure that they still develop the skills they will need in real life.
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