AI and Academia: The End of the Essay?
Last November, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a free version of its large language model known as GPT or Generative Pre-trained Transformer. ChatGPT produces human-like text to various lengths and styles in response to prompts, for instance, “Write a 500-word paper on psychoanalysis like a Stephen King thriller”.
Since its release, journalists and some academics have claimed that AI like ChatGPT are a threat to higher education: Why assign students papers or take-home exams when they can just use an AI to complete A+ work for them? But these fears are unfounded.
In this talk, I’ll review the strengths and weaknesses of large language models like ChatGPT to demonstrate that they do a poor job of completing most university assignments without a knowledgeable human hand to guide them.
I’ll argue that these models are not a threat to higher education but a useful pedagogical tool that can help students learn how to write better papers, and facilitate more meaningful real-world interactions between students and professors.
Finally, I’ll explore how universities might use AI to improve the experience of students in and outside of the classroom. In the future, language will be the mechanism by which humans interact with computers. Universities should prepare students for this change.
Time
Starts:
Ends:
Location
Live on Zoom - register with this link: https://tinyurl.com/BT-Essay
Cost
na
Additional Information
Dan Lametti is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Acadia University and a Senior Advisor to the technology company OneReach where he founded the OneReach Academic Fellowship for conversational AI. Before joining Acadia’s psychology department in 2018, he was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and a Science Advisor at the Wellcome Trust. Dan has a PhD in Experiment Psychology from McGill University and a BSc in Physics from Bishop’s University. His academic research program investigates the cognitive and brain basis of speech and language.
Contact
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the Maple League's Faculty Excellence Developer, Neil Silcox, at nsilcox@ubishops.ca.
Neil Silcox (he/him)
Faculty Excellence Developer | Maple League of Universities
416-629-4400