In a recent incident in South Carolina, a college professor caught a student using ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI, to write a 500-word essay on the 18th-century philosopher David Hume and the paradox of horror. This development has left many educators in a near-panic as they struggle to combat this potential new form of cheating. “It’s a clean style but recognizable. I would say it writes like a very smart 12th-grader. There’s particular odd wording used that was not wrong, just peculiar… if you were teaching somebody how to write an essay, this is how you tell them to write it before they figure out their own style,” said Hick of ChatGPT’s written responses in an interview.
Detecting and preventing the use of ChatGPT in cheating
To detect the fraudulent work, Professor Hick used software made by the producers of ChatGPT to determine if AI formulated the written response. The software returned a 99.9% likely match, but unlike in standard plagiarism detection software, there were no citations, making it nearly impossible to prove that ChatGPT had concocted the paper. This incident raises concerns about the potential for the widespread use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT for cheating and the difficulties in detecting and preventing it, as they produce original content. Therefore, professors must stay vigilant and aware of the capabilities of these tools to maintain the integrity of higher education.
