March 23, 2023
In November 2022, ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) software produced by the company OpenAI, was released to the public. Three months later, the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Teaching and Learning hosted its first event meant to address ChatGPT’s presence in the educational environment.
This event, called “ChatGPT: The Evolution of Generative AI Tools and Implications for Teaching,” was the first of several events created to guide educators in sifting through the large amounts of media coverage given to ChatGPT, and to find out how the new technology impacts the classroom. John Radzilowicz (interim director of teaching support within the University Center for Teaching and Learning) and Diane Litman (professor, Department of Computer Science; senior scientist, Learning Research and Development Center) led the event on February 17, and discussed how the technology works, along with its potential benefits and limitations.
“In the presentation we did… my focus was on what it means for our teaching, and what we should be concerned about,” said Radzilowicz. In response to many people’s first impressions of ChatGPT, the event worked to dispel “hyperbolic” misinformation that has rapidly spread in the media. “You’ve got articles proclaiming ‘the end of the college essay,’ and ‘the end of faculty,’ ...Our message to faculty at this point is, do not panic.”
Radzilowicz noted that when adapting to the presence of ChatGPT in the classroom, it is important to recognize and become familiar with not only what the technology can do, but also what its limitations are.
“All [ChatGPT] is doing is, given a context, predicting the most likely next word. It has so much data and so much computing power that it's able to do that remarkably well… It doesn't have any knowledge of what’s true and false,” Litman said, emphasizing the importance of understanding the technology.
It is here that Litman identifies one of the technical limitations of ChatGPT. “If you’re thinking of it as a replacement,” she said, “then accuracy is a big problem.”
However, Litman also described ways that the tool can be useful as a resource: “If you're thinking about it as an assistant, where it gives you a first draft, and then a human who knows these things can check the information… there's a lot of interesting ways for it to be used.”
According to Radzilowicz, the conversation surrounding ChatGPT is far from unprecedented—just like Pitt’s dedication to innovate alongside new developments to best meet the needs of the community. During the event, Radzilowicz encouraged faculty to examine their curriculum for ways to incorporate ChatGPT in a productive way and to familiarize themselves with the software.
With previous technological innovations like the calculator, the internet, and Wikipedia, similar threats to education were feared—like potential academic dishonesty, or technology replacing educators’ jobs. According to Radzilowicz, “the answer to a lot of people’s concerns is already in place. Everybody wants to talk about cheating… that’s not really an issue because Pitt’s policy already covers that—It says no outside help that has not been approved by an instructor.”
The goal of the events has been to encourage Pitt faculty to understand and embrace the new technology, rather than shying away from it in the classroom.
“ChatGPT is this natural evolution to generative AI. What we’ve been used to with AI doing for us is helping to sort things out, providing us with basic lists, reviewing characteristics… But what we haven’t asked it to do, at least openly, is to be creative,” said Radzilowicz. “That’s what we want to think about with ChatGPT. It's an evolution, not really the revolution people think it is. It's a natural evolution of what has been happening.”
To access recordings of “ChatGPT: The Evolution of Generative AI Tools and Implications for Teaching” and two other events hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning, along with other resources for integrating ChatGPT into the classroom, visit the ChatGPT Resources for Faculty.
--Emma Bender, SCI writing intern