Andre is a college sophomore. This semester has been his busiest one yet as he was just voted president of an on-campus organization and is enrolled in his first 300-level courses. As the semester has progressed, Andre has felt his schedule ramping up and he now feels bogged down by the number of essays he has been assigned. His friend Thomas advised him to simply submit the essay prompts to ChatGPT to save himself time and effort. However, the idea of turning in work that he didn’t create, even if he’s not technically exploiting someone else’s work, just doesn’t sit right with him. Besides, Andre knew of several professors who used a software with the capability of deciphering if an essay was written by ChatGPT or a different artificial intelligence (AI) language model. Overall, Andre is put off by the usage of AI language models in academic spaces, especially when one attempts to be deceptive about their usage of AI.
Over fall break, Andre and his friend Carter made an interesting discovery. Carter’s mother is a college professor who uses GPTZero, a software designed to detect if text was created using ChatGPT. Andre and Carter were testing the software when Carter decided to input feedback that he received from his English writing professor. To Carter and Andre’s surprise, the software concluded that the feedback was created by ChatGPT. Given that Andre and Carter are in the same English writing class, Andre input his feedback from the same assignment. Once again, the software revealed that the feedback had been generated by ChatGPT. “Is he using this thing to assign us grades too?” Andre wondered aloud.
Carter and Andre were unsure of what to do with this information. On one hand, they felt cheated. Neither of them felt comfortable with the prospect of AI being a determinant of their GPAs. Both students felt that grading and providing feedback on a writing assignment was fairly subjective; it’s not as if they’d completed a scantron exam that assigned a grade based on objectively correct answers. Besides, why should they go through the trouble of writing these essays and stories organically if their professor was just going to use ChatGPT to grade them? Additionally, grading assigned essays is a requirement of professorship; that is part of what they get paid for.
On the other hand, the feedback they received on their assignments was objectively helpful and thorough. Additionally, the feedback given by ChatGPT likely couldn’t be biased in the way their professor could be biased. ChatGPT wouldn’t know if a student was chronically late to class or made politically polarizing comments that didn’t align with the professor’s own beliefs. In this way, all students were graded on an equal playing field. Andre also pointed out that this specific professor had confided to the class that his mother had recently passed away. Andre wondered if the professor was struggling with his mental health to the extent that he was struggling to fulfill his job requirements and was therefore outsourcing them to ChatGPT.
Andre and Carter were at a loss. Should they report their professor to the dean of faculty and risk him being reprimanded? Should they confront their professor directly and risk retaliation from him? Or, should they give their professor the benefit of the doubt and accept the thorough, ChatGPT-provided feedback.