In this episode of The Dumbing Down of America…
Let’s be honest, shall we? Students who hate studying have for decades employed various methods to skip studying but still pass tests. Cliffs Notes was the go-to for kids who loathed reading novels, for example, so they skimmed through a Cliffs Notes condensed version and hoped for the best.
That was then, this is now.
As reported by College Fix, there’s a growing trend among students who use artificial intelligence (AI) to not only skip studying, but to avoid actually taking tests. Artificial intelligence bot ChatGPA has become the new Cliffs Notes. As noted by The Fix, a College of Staten Island student recently used ChatGPT on his final exams — both of which he aced. The student told The Fix:
I used it for my multiple choice finals, two of them, and got a 95 on one of them and the other one, a 100.
The student sounds proud of a bot taking his or her test, right? Another unidentified student told the outlet the bot is easy to use:
All you have to do is copy and paste the multiple choice questions, or take a picture of it so it converts from chat to text, and then paste it into ChatGPT, and out of the multiple answers it gives you the right one and explains why.
All [I] had to do was add some final citations, scattered randomly throughout the essay. [A] mutual friend who goes to Wagner [College] used it on her final 7-page paper and got an A+, a near-perfect score.
Incidentally, an Internet “bot” — web robot, robot, or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity. Hence, why not let a bot take your final exams, kids? Hell, if you use them enough, think about it: You can land a high-paying job, then promptly get fired for not knowing squat.
Here’s more, via CNet:
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish. You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful.
The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence called OpenAI, lets you type questions using natural language, to which the chatbot gives conversational, if somewhat stilted, answers. The bot remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. Its answers are derived from huge volumes of information on the internet.
It’s a big deal. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable in areas where there’s good training data for it to learn from. It’s not omniscient or smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than a million people were trying out ChatGPT.
Adam Ellwanger, a professor of English and rhetoric at the University of Houston-Downtown, tested the AI service by importing a prompt for an essay similar to one he would give to his students. He used the “text-davinci-003” model of ChatGPT, writing that it “produced the entire essay in about five seconds.” The professor then “graded” the essay as he would if it were produced by one of his students, looking at “the quality of the writing and the strength of the argument.”
Where the writing itself is concerned, Davinci exhibits a total mastery of English grammar and syntax. There are no sentence-level errors in the entire essay.
So what about the quality of a bot-written essay? According to Ellwanger:
Davinci doesn’t advance any arguments of its own – it merely recounts claims that it encountered in its research. What Davinci has really produced is a book report – not an essay that shows some evidence of critical thinking.
The abilities of chatbots like ChatGPT are impressive, but they aren’t yet advanced enough to serve as a total shortcut for students. They will be soon, though.
Awesome, right? How exciting that we may soon see college graduates who can’t read or write, so they instead rely on artificial intelligence to do the job for them. Ellwanger concurs, telling The Fix:
The only way to become a better writer is to write. Ultimately, good writing reflects the soul of the writer — and Davinci doesn’t have one. Depending on AI won’t just deprive you of refining a critical skill in college – it will ensure that ‘your’ writing is soulless and forgettable.
Amen, said yours truly, who got markedly better the more he wrote.
The Bottom Line
The left’s intentional and continuing dumbing down of America can only lead to the U.S. falling further behind much of the world. Consider the following:
NYC to Eliminate ‘Gifted and Talented’ School Program. Any Guesses?
Two words: We’re screwed.
That is, unless the U.S. education system gets it crap together and returns to educating students instead of lowering expectations, indoctrinating young children in the ways of gender “transitioning,” pronoun “self-identification,” so-called “critical race theory,” and other such divisive nonsense.
And what are the chances of the above happening? A snowball’s chance.
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