Everyone is talking about it, but we may not yet fully grasp what it is and what it means for education: ChatGPT. ChatGPT stands for “Generative Pre-Trained Transformer” and is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot. This means that you can have a dialogue with an AI bot. It will provide you with answers to questions, statements, or commands which it constructs from rapidly searching a massive text data set and putting together a more or less coherent narrative. Some of the output it produces is surprisingly well written and fit for purpose. Other times, the output seems very superficial and less useful or even wrong. In any case, it is a development that we as educators need to be aware of and take into consideration when designing assessments and intended learning outcomes. This is not going anywhere and it looks like we are stepping into a new terrain in education. In today’s digest, we provide some introductory resources on ChatGPT.
1) ChatGPT explained: everything you need to know about the AI chatbot, techradar.com
A very recent article that provides an overall introduction to ChatGPT. How it works? Newest developments (up until today) and how it can be used.
2) How ChatGPT Can Improve Education, Not Threaten It, John Villasenor for Scientific American
The initial response from the education community was shock when it became clear what ChatGPT can do. However, slowly some acceptance has settled in and we may be ready to think more creatively about this. In this article a law professor from UCLA explains how he is guiding his students through the process of using ChatGPT for their benefit in learning.
