Breakthrough, milestone, turning point – these words are heard again and again when experts talk about ChatGPT. With the chatbot you can not only talk on the Internet. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) he also writes essays, poems, letters and all kinds of other texts on command – and inspires with his skills. This gives teachers at universities and schools food for thought. Is the end of written homework imminent?
These developments will change the school, as the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education (KMK), Berlin’s Education Senator Astrid-Sabine Busse (SPD), recently told the information service “Bildung.Table”. ChatGPT is still very new. “But that’s my focus now – right, right up front.” According to a spokesman, a KMK commission wanted to deal with the topic of artificial intelligence in January.
The German University Association is also closely following the progress of ChatGPT and other AI applications. Findings as to whether and to what extent students are already working with the text generator are not available, says spokesman Matthias Jaroch. “However, it would be unrealistic not to assume that students use or will use ChatGPT.”
The Bavarian Realschule Teachers’ Association sees it similarly: “It is a misconception that these developments remain hidden from students,” says digital officer Ferdinand Stipberger. It is obvious that these chatbots like ChatGPT used for homework. The expert Anja Bensinger-Stolze from the school union GEW sees a great danger in this: Pupils no longer learn to make references if they simply typed AI-generated texts in order to be able to tick off their homework, she says.
Creativity and critical thinking – that could, according to educational experts, fall by the wayside – and the latter in particular is also important when dealing with artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT. “Even if the model already works very well, there are still often wrong answers, which at the same time sound very convincing,” explains computer science professor Iryna Gurevych from the Technical University of Darmstadt. If you ask ChatGPT about Olaf Scholz, for example, it says: “He is the Federal Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Merkel IV cabinet.” And Chancellor is therefore still Angela Merkel.
ChatGPT can explain why this is the case when asked: “My level of knowledge relates to the period up to September 2021, so I cannot go into current developments after this date,” explains the chatbot and immediately gives an important tip: “It is important to note that it is always possible that my answers may be out of date and it is advisable to check and verify this information.”
But one thing is certain: ChatGPT will get better over time. “It’s a learning system,” says computer science professor Katharina Morik from the Technical University of Dortmund. In the future there will be better versions and also other language-savvy AI, so the possible applications will increase. And the teachers will have to react to that, Morik thinks. “We can no longer assume that if someone writes a nice text as a summary for the literature, that he has understood the literature.”
So should students be forbidden to be helped by artificial intelligence? After all, cheat sheets and copying are not allowed in exams. Advances in this direction are already being made elsewhere. For example, the New York school board blocked ChatGPT on their servers, says GEW expert Bensinger-Stolze. KMK President Busse, on the other hand, does not consider bans to be sensible. “The question should rather be what skills are needed in order to be able to use artificial intelligence sensibly,” she said “Bildung.Table”.
“We must neither categorically reject nor ban such technological innovations. Clear rules and a sensible, targeted use of AI are much more important,” agrees Stipberger from the Bavarian Realschule Teachers’ Association. In order for students to be able to learn this, the teachers would also have to receive appropriate further training.
Bensinger-Stolze says that the ChatGPT debate may also offer an opportunity to try out new testing methods in schools. More critical reflection and interpretation, less pure querying of knowledge. Morik predicts that universities will also be more concerned with transferring learned knowledge to other tasks in the future. “And we have to do oral exams.”
