While artificial intelligence (AI) has been a relatively silent partner in higher education early warning systems, personalized learning platforms, and more for some time now, we can fairly say that ChatGPT is the big boomer being heard about. in college. The AI chatbot is taking many of us by surprise and drawing the attention of more of us, not least because of its charming and eager extroversion – it “talks” to us. What’s going on here? Is ChatGPT a threat? What happens next?
ChatGPT broadcast
ChatGPT has been a pretty busy bot, going to business school, law school, the office, Congress, and more. We are experiencing the development of Rogers’ diffusion of innovation (1962) in real time. Ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in a research preview on November 30, 2022, we’ve been busy curating links and spreading our treasures among ourselves. We are also creating artifacts like the Advances in AI Timeline developed by the Center for eLearning Initiatives at Penn State Behrend. The twin objectives of all of our awareness raising activities are to accelerate the development of our individual and collective views on whether ChatGPT is a helper or an adversary and to decide our next steps accordingly.
The truth is that AI is a flawed facsimile of human intelligence, but depending on the task at hand, it can be quite capable. For that reason, we have been putting it into fledgling use. The danger lies in the risk of distilling our efforts into empty “best practices” instead of informed recommendations because we are building the empirical evidence as we go. Not everyone is aware that Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) is a decades-old field of study. (The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1955 by Dartmouth mathematics professor John McCarthy, and the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education published its inaugural edition in 1989.) The historically limited capabilities of the field’s main subject of study may have contributed to what could be characterized as its stunted growth, until recently.
As the big boom continues to reverberate, we will begin to put our theories to empirical scrutiny, and as practical evidence mounts, we will be better equipped to confirm whether we have made the right decision.
An “objective” view
The name ChatGPT refers to a type of neural network machine learning model, but many different AI models “generate” new information as they respond to a prompt. The word trigger it is often found in lists of suggested verbs that many find useful in crafting learning objectives. These lists are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, a framework originally designed and later revised and updated to provide a common vocabulary for educational assessment. Interestingly, the highest level of Bloom’s revised taxonomy is create. Low create in verb lists, trigger it usually appears as one of many possible ways of demonstrating creation. Both verbs have Latin roots; both impart a feeling of bringing something into existence that did not previously exist. However, trigger conveys a process of cause and effect, even mechanistic, while create it evokes a sense of growth, of development, of invention, of imagination, of the extraordinary.