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ChatGPT is the chatbot created by AI research lab OpenAI using GPT3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3), a language processing model. Trained using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, its primary purpose is to help generate human-like text for any prompt provided by a user, giving the AI model countless applications across domains. Based on the prompt, ChatGPT can provide responses of lengths up to a maximum of 500 words.
Due to its ability to create content on anything it’s trained on, ChatGPT has made its way into academia too. The recent past has seen students relying on AI text generators like it to breeze through college essays and research papers. OpenAI has also followed up its initial GPT-3.5 model with a more advanced successor—GPT-4—which boasts of better capabilities. These include better context length, improved processing capabilities, and an enhanced coherence of responses for the AI paper writer.
While ChatGPT does seem impressive in the quality of the content it generates, using it for academic writing assignments is rather controversial. Here’s why.
Risks & Limitations of Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT Essay Writer
Using ChatGPT for academic writing poses more problems than it solves.
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Mechanical content is a given when it comes to AI writing generators. However, you might be putting much more at stake while using OpenAI’s ChatGPT essay writer. Here are all the reasons why ChatGPT shouldn’t be your first choice for academic assignments:
1. Mediocre Ideation and Inadequate Detail
AI essay writers often provide information plainly as opposed to presenting comprehensive insights for the reader. ChatGPT relies on a preexisting data bank that it is trained with to answer questions posed by users. This database doesn’t comprehensively delve into everything, as corroborated by OpenAI’s chief executive. The extent of information held by the ChatGPT essay writer has a cut-off date of September 2021, following which the AI chatbot remains ignorant of world events. Thus, the chatbot is not always capable of providing in-depth information as required and also fails to understand context. With academic writing assignments requiring students to address prompts in sufficient detail and relevant contexts, turning in content generated by ChatGPT puts students at the risk of jeopardizing grades that come with intuitive writing.
2. Factual Inaccuracies
The ChatGPT AI writer sometimes generates incorrect text. Since it is powered by a large language model, it predicts the next word in a series of words and then the following sentences in a paragraph without concerning itself with accuracy. Benedict Evans, a technology analyst, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to write a bio on himself. He received a response that may have sounded true but was riddled with inaccuracies about his professional life. This can be attributed to the chatbot’s tendency to “hallucinate” facts. This phenomenon is now known as AI hallucination and has been a major pitfall impacting large language models and their dependent chatbots. Thus, relying on this AI writer for college essays could also mean presenting inaccurate information, leading to potentially poor grades.
3. Problematic Responses
Although a content moderation API is employed to control unsafe content on it, ChatGPT may still respond with biased opinions or unsafe instructions at times. This is especially problematic if students are using it for essay writing assignments on controversial topics related to violence and sex, among others. Apart from the regular errors, biased essays and papers might lead to an overall drop in learning outcomes, causing considerable unease to educators.
4. Potentially Outdated Information
Unlike a search engine, OpenAI’s ChatGPT lacks access to the internet. It cannot scour the web in real time to give users the information they need accompanied by reliable resources (which are a crucial part of academic writing). Its knowledge base also currently stands limited to all things prior to 2021. Thus, for novel topics post this timeline, students might find themselves working with possibly dated information if they used the GPT-3 AI chatbot to write their essays and research papers. Even the latest GPT-4 iteration of ChatGPT has a cut-off date limited to September 2021, essentially enhancing only performance and not the validity of the training data set as a whole.
5. Repetition and Verbose Text
Common to machine-generated material, repetitions are rife in essays written by GPT-3, 3.5, and even GPT-4. In fact, OpenAI itself has confirmed that the ChatGPT essay writer tends to frequently use some phrases more than others due to biases while training and issues in over optimization. Not only would this lead students to write shallow and substandard essays, it also puts many of them at risk of presenting similar text for a given task. Repurposing and restructuring text might help decode complex facts but are ill-suited to skilled writing tasks.
Tackling Issues Arising from Using ChatGPT for Essay Writing
Using content generated by ChatGPT for college writing gets assignments done but doesn’t entirely solve plagiarism concerns.
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AI essay writing is a growing problem in academia today. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT answers any given prompt with seemingly original text, it does so with drawbacks. Students who use it for their writing assignments are likely to be relying on information that is biased, not up-to-date, potentially wordy, lacking detail, and/or possibly incorrect. What’s more is that the chatbot doesn’t cite any sources, which is an obvious problem when it comes to essays and research papers. With all college writing assignments meant to test students’ grasp of course material, using AI essay generators only leads to a gap in the learning process and threatens academic integrity.
Instead, students ought to rely on their own research using credible resources to draft their essays and research papers. IPL’s Writing Tool is great for fine tuning any form of writing with its thorough grammar and spelling checks, aiding the creation of quality content through pointed writing help.
FAQs
1. Can ChatGPT write essays?
Yes, ChatGPT can write detailed essays for users depending on the prompt they use. Most often, ChatGPT has a cut-off limit of 500 words and ends up generating essays and speeches that are around the same length. However, GPT-4 has an extended context length and can generate longer essays.
2. Is the ChatGPT essay writer accurate?
ChatGPT is prone to making several errors. Apart from hallucinating facts, it is also limited by outdated data. Its lack of connection to the internet leaves the ChatGPT essay writer with old information and with no capability of writing on the latest events.
3. How does one use ChatGPT to write an essay?
To write essays and detailed written-content, ChatGPT requires a coherently worded prompt that outlines all the necessary information the user requires in the essay. This can often get tricky, and the user might have to run through multiple iterations of prompts to receive the ideal response.