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As we write this column, it has been several weeks since the release of Chat Generative Pre-trained T (aka "ChatGPT"), by OpenAI (https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/). ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as to generate various genres of writing, including essays and poems, as well as code and titles for one's writings. Once we had a draft of this article, we asked ChatGPT to suggest some titles for this article and were surprised at the titles it generated. We decided to stick with our own.
Although there is a lot of potential, many educators have expressed concerns and are now wondering if "the college essay is dead?" (Marche, 2022, para. 1) and "Why do your homework when a chatbot can do it for you?" (Bowman, 2022, para. 1). We would like to note that throughout technology7 s history, there have been concerns regarding its benefits and harms. Orben (2020) argues that our views about technology are largely influenced by "technological determinism" (p. 1146), which is
the idea (a) that the technologies used by a society form basic and fundamental conditions that affect all areas of existence and (b) that when such technologies are innovated, these developments are the single most important driver of changes in said society. (Leonardi, 2012, as cited in Orben, 2020, p. 1146)
Orben also emphasized that this perspective "plays a crucial role in initial reactions to new technologies, and moral panics" (Orben, 2020, p. 1146). Similarly, Morozov (2013) asserts that technosolutionist views, the idea that technology is the solution, even for complex social phenomena like education, have predominantly shaped our understanding of educational technology. However, before we panic, it is important to keep in mind that tools such as ChatGPT are emerging technologies (Veletsianos, 2010, 2016), and as such, it is hard to fully comprehend their implications as they are currently evolving. Moreover, even the definition of AI is unclear, as noted in a prior Ends and Means column by Henderson and Milman (2022). Before the dust settles (if it ever does!), let us delve a little more into what happened and what the implications of this emerging tool means for educators.
WHAT HAPPENED?
The first large language models (LLM) started to appear...