Can I use generative artificial intelligence apps like ChatGPT for classwork?
Answer
Short answer: it depends on your teacher.
Long answer: At current levels of development (April 2023), generative AI is good at creating bland, inoffensive, formulaic types of documents—things like memos, summaries, abstracts, and the like. For creative or original work, AI is not very good. By the very nature of large language modeling (LLM), the underlying technology of generative AI, it can only work with existing, web-based documents, so at best it’s finding interesting connections between existing ideas. At worst, it’s providing a mediocre summary of current thought. Of special concern is the way it creates references, which are usually required in academic writing. Generative AI does NOT typically cite real sources. Instead, it CREATES plausible sounding sources and formats these bogus sources in whatever style you ask it to use. Because of this, checking sources is the easiest way to determine if a given academic paper was generated by AI.
For more information on generative AI, see our guide.