Using AI to improve work, not do all of it

March 14, 2023

By Madeleen Saguid

Photo by Lavaillustro - Shutterstock

A few weeks ago, a University of the Philippines Diliman professor posted on Facebook an essay that was confirmed to have been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The allegations came as he grew suspicious when the students’ written work failed to make sense. As he inputted the essay into an AI detector, he said the results indicated that the work was “most likely written by AI.”

This sparked debates and discussions in the academic community on the benefits and impacts of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT or chat-generated pre-trained transformer — an AI AI-powered language processing chatbot that provides human-like conversations and composes answers to questions based on the massive information it gathers online.

Following the incident, the UP Artificial Intelligence Program denounced the use of AI tools that misrepresent "valid scholarly works" and urged students to uphold academic integrity by ensuring that all academic requirements are completed entirely by students. But it also said the use of AI tools to enhance and facilitate the students’ learning “should be encouraged.”

Although there is a lot of criticism of students who use AI tools to complete their assignments, recent studies suggest that AI will undoubtedly revolutionize higher education. Amid the panic, there are extraordinary opportunities to embrace.

AI as part of life and learning

Professors from the United Kingdom claim that within the next three to five years, ChatGPT and other AI tools will be commonplace in most schools and workplaces, according to a webinar hosted by Graide, an assessment and feedback network for teaching, on February 23.

Professor Stephen Webb, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at Portsmouth University, said that “AI will continue to develop quickly and play an increasingly important role in both life and education.”

Although there are still serious issues and concerns with cheating, the academic community has to learn how to navigate through this type of industry and make the necessary adaptations. The worst thing it can do is disregard this innovation.

Webb suggests schools should create an environment where students use AI tools like ChatGPT to learn. Just like a super clever textbook, students can utilize the AI chatbot to ask a single question and receive multiple definitions and examples.

Some students themselves here in the country have also started to adapt to that environment.

In an interview, Matthew Unsay, an electronics and communications engineering student from the Technological Institute of the Philippines, says that he uses ChatGPT like a “pseudo-professor” to ask certain questions he missed in class.

“Ginagamit ko sya pag may mga concepts akong hindi masyado naintindihan and I need to ask my professor about it. Instead of sending them an e-mail and waiting for their reply pa, dinadaan ko sya sa [ChatGPT] kasi its more efficient,” he said.

Andrei Nicolas, an international studies student from De La Salle University, says that he also uses ChatGPT to save time studying.

“Pag kailangan ko mag review ng mabilisan for example sa graded recitations, nakaka-pull ako ng ideas through ChatGPT,” he said.

Nonetheless, in order to maintain the academic integrity of their works, both have voiced moral issues that need to be addressed when using AI tools to assist with school works.

“For me, ang AI tools kasi should be utilized not to tell students directly kung ano yung sagot, but to get an idea paano sumagot,” Nicolas said.

Limitations

This technology certainly has its flaws. For one, it cannot handle complex math, physics, or other subjects due to alignment problems and mainly because the system bases its answers on previous texts it has processed.

And while the system is theoretically designed not to cross some moral red lines, like other AI models, it can also say biased and offensive things. Reports from Standford University have said that an earlier version of ChatGPT generated extremely Islamophobic content and also produced some concerning talking points

about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China.

Questions about ethical concerns have also surfaced about students taking full ownership of outputs created by chatbots without giving credit to where credit is due.

But if students only use chatbots for light assistance in completing their requirements, these AI systems become a helpful tool for them.

Dr. Tess Payongayong, vice chancellor for academic affairs at UP Diliman, stated in a forum that “if we use ChatGPT to improve our work [...] or any other light assists and it will not be tantamount to doing your work, then it simply becomes a simple tool to help us.”

Rethinking assessment tools

As AI rapidly improves, it is unclear how many resourceful students might start taking advantage of it or if teachers w

ill figure out a way to catch them. Still, these types of AI are already making us consider what activities we humans should carry on with and what we would rather let technology handle.

Recently, internet-based plagiarism detection service Turnitin has successfully developed an AI writing detector that identifies 97 percent of ChatGPT-authored writing. With this, teachers will be able to examine the content and use feedback tools with the same user experience they currently have because the new feature will work within the Turnitin process.

In higher education, faculty members should also train students in interpreting data and encourage them to practice creativity and critical thinking since AI tools cannot make interpretations on their own, according to Dr. Ramon Guillermo, Professor of UP Diliman Center for International Studies.

“What we have to do is bring in the interpretative framework, train them to interpret; that’s the objective of education because this kind of model (ChatGPT) cannot actually interpret; it looks at interpretations, summarizes interpretations. Siguro ito yun isa sa mga aspects na pwede nating i-explore,” he said.

Dr. Payongayong also said that it was crucial for students to have access to AI tools, including ChatGPT and other AI systems, not to replace the actual work done by students but to improve their performance in the classroom.

She noted that faculty members have yet to define the boundaries to determine to what extent students and teachers should incorporate AI-generated suggestions in their academic outputs.

“We [need to] rethink our assessment tools and mahalaga na when we discuss this with students, we tell them to use AI technologies to improve

their work, hindi para gawin yung trabaho para sa kanila,” she said.