AUSTIN (KXAN) — Students heading back to school this semester are entering the classroom with a new tool that experts say could soon be as common as a calculator.
“It’s a very useful tool, and students are going to have to know how to use that tool, when they should use that tool, when they shouldn’t use the tool,” said Greg Durrett, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas in Austin.
What is this tool? Large language models, AKA Chat GPT.
“I would liken Chat GPT to the invention of the calculator. When the calculator was invented, it took a while to catch on, but these days, we’re never without a calculator,” Durrett said.
According to Durrett, students and teachers need to understand this tool. Not just how to use it, but also how it works. To help with this, he teaches a course designed for educators that explains the ins and outs of large language models like Chat GPT.
“I think having an understanding of those building blocks will help you be a better consumer of these tools in the future,” Durrett said about why he designed the course, which also teaches the pitfalls of using AI.
AI in the Classroom
Some of the ways Durrett said students can use AI is to help with research or summarize an article.
“In school, I would have gone to the World Book Encyclopedia, right? I think 5-10, years ago, students would go to Wikipedia to try to figure it out. These days, I think asking Chat GPT is a very reasonable starting point,” Durrett said.
He does warn about some of the issues of AI. Hallucinations occur when AI combines two pieces of information that don’t really belong together.
AI also removes a lot of character from writing, making everything sound the same. AI has its own style that lacks the human touch. Durrett noted that he sees something similar in scientific research papers because scientists have developed a certain writing style that is rather bland.
AI could also become a crutch. Durrett worries that people using AI for everything may lose their critical thinking skills.
One of the other major issues of AI: bias.
“It’s all predicated right on the information or the inputs that go into the model, that go into the system,” said S. Craig Watkins, executive director of the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas.
The think-tank specializes in exploring how emerging technology can be used in our world today.
Watkins said that because AI learns from the data that enters it, it can come with the baggage of the people who did so.
“If that data, for example, is likely drawn from certain segments of the population and not others within the population, then how that model performs will be based primarily right on that data and populations that it’s been trained on.”
Students and teachers need to be aware of this. The information they turn to might contain data that is not actually representational of the whole.
Durrett believes that many of these issues will go away as AI becomes more advanced.
“I really do think that these tools are like a calculator in that you could try to keep it out of the classroom now, and I think there’s use in having a balanced approach to it. But I think in 10 years, we’re going to look on these as tools just as ubiquitous as Google search,” Durrett said.