ChatBOT has been around since 1966, but a new AI, ChatGPT—a play off of ChatBOT—was released in Nov. 2022. ChatGPT has a myriad of resources that can aid in creating lesson plans, schedules and writing essays. But the features don’t stop there. The app can edit papers, make spreadsheets, write poems and attend to every literary need. Although this new Al can help advance the academic world, plagiarism concerns arise.

Within the Bend-La Pine School District, there has been talk of how this app will affect the classroom environment, as students have begun using it in literacy, history and mathematics courses.

Benjamin Pierce, Summit history and economics teacher, has only had one student use the app this year that he knows of. In the past, it was simpler for teachers to catch internet plagiarism, as articles from Google are easily discovered—but new AI changes everything. ChatGPT employs an algorithm with specific triggers that mimic human responses generated by reputable web-users data—producing seemingly original writing. 

The saving grace for teachers is the personable aspect of tone. 

“It didn’t sound like him, I know the voice of my students and the way it was written was not the same,” said Pierce. Quickly after discovering the student cheated serious consequences were dealt out. People can lose so much for one good grade. Is the reward really worth the risk?

Yet, some people aren’t always caught… 

“I use ChatGPT simply because it’s a resource, and the real world revolves around the most effective and productive way of getting things done. Which is exactly what it does,” said an anonymous Summit sophomore. A lot of pressure rides on the grades you get, and with ChatGPT to do your work for you, it takes some of the stress away.

Peter Yang, a product lead at Roblox, tweeted about the app after asking his followers about their favorite features. Many responses revolved around using AI to earn A’s on school essays via editing or simply cheating entirely. 

“Instead of banning AI to protect artificial exams and grades, schools should empower students to use AI to craft products that actually help the world,” Yang said in a recent tweet. His followers agree. An article by American Progress shows studies that students experience having less anxiety around assessments because of the app. ChatGPT has features to help users study topics and feel more confident going into tests. Teachers have seen the progress and have accepted this type of usage.

Yang promotes using ChatGPT to create a respected culture. He lists the way it helps him become a better writer and takes into account when his followers and other popular opinions give him ideas—like using it to write recipes and edit work. The way Yang utilizes it is how ChatGPT was meant to be used.

Alan Turing, often known as the father of modern computer science, pioneered the basis for new technology, including AI. 

“What we want is a machine that can learn from experience,” said Turing, hoping his studies would expand the way in which technology can be used to help humanity educationally.

“It will be interesting to see where the world will be a few years from now as a result of this new technology,” said local computer vision scientist and software developer Douglas Beck. As multiple versions of AI are being released, the tech itself is advancing its software to avoid being detected by other bots.

Seemingly overnight, Edward Tian, a 22 year old, made an app called GPTZero to help teachers detect ChatGPT essays. His app spread over most social media platforms within a week, gaining over 30,000 users, most of them being high school teachers and college professors. Although this bot catches long carefully crafted essays, the short and sweet ones are still safe. 

“I’ve used it in economics to generate summaries so I don’t have to read multiple articles,” another anonymous Summit sophomore said. The summary the student needs is only about a paragraph long and doesn’t have much information, so GPTZero can’t be certain who wrote it. 

For the future, Tian is working on his bot to be able to detect anything from ChatGPT in any class it’s used for. USA Today reports that it will help distinguish between text written by a human and what’s written by its own AI platform and other, similar technology. OpenAI released a similar feature as well, in hopes of diminishing teacher backlash.