It seems that ChatGPT and similar ones have many advantages for the education system, and despite that, there is a good chance that they will be bypassed by the education system without affecting it. So before we delve into what can be done and what the potential impact is, let’s talk about why there won’t be an impact.
>> Hebrew – at the moment the results in Hebrew are ridiculous and not even close to something usable, from past experience (for example translation between languages) it will take a few more years until the systems work well in Hebrew.
>> Adoption of technology by the teachers – adoption of new technology takes time. As the age of the users increases and the complexity of the technology increases, so does the adoption time. About 40% of the teachers in Israel are over 50 years old, so it can be expected that there will be resistance on the part of most teachers to the use of the new technology, while the students will embrace it and find ways to use it (not always for the benefit of learning).
>> Adoption of technology by the education system – quite a few new technologies were happily embraced by the education system, created a lot of media noise and huge investments, but in fact none of them penetrated more than 5% of the school hours and all of them disappeared completely within a few years (such as TV , movies, tutorials, smart phone…).
>> Studying purely for a grade – one of the advantages of artificial intelligence systems is the ability to adapt to the specific student, and therefore it is at its best when the student is curious, researching on his/her own, looking for answers to questions he/she was not asked. When the sole motivation is to get a high grade, the main use may be to invest a minimum of time to get a maximum grade, and therefore the education system will oppose the use of technology.
>> The maturity of the technology – when a new technology breaks, everyone immediately jumps and predicts its future and it is always bright pink or dark black (there is no such thing as a gray future). Yet the truth is that after the initial breakthrough there are many ups and downs. For example, in the 1980s (when I was a beginning programmer) artificial intelligence was the next big thing (and I even took a few courses on the subject to prepare for the promised future). We’re almost 50 years later now and AI is still the next big thing. It is true that there has been enormous progress, but it is not clear whether it is mature for the education system or whether it needs a few more years.
And we haven’t talked yet about copyright, conservatism, ignorance, fake news, inherent biases in the data…
In conclusion, nowadays it is customary to ‘get’ ready-made works. On the other hand, the professors have tools for locating copies. The students in turn learned how not to get caught and on the other hand the software programs were perfected, and the battle continued… but ChatGPT is a paradigm shift, ask the right question and get a unique paper. Now is the time for the teachers to change the paradigm too – let’s say encourage students to join forces with the tool, to contribute new ideas, interesting directions…
HE