Students and ChatGPT
Regarding “ChatGPT being put to test at college level” (Business, Feb. 29):
Back in the Stone Age, when I was in college and was assigned a paper on a particular egregious text of required reading, I turned to CliffsNotes. Those abbreviated yellow-and-black paperbacks covered everything from Shakespeare to Tolstoy, and you might be able to pull off a thesis based solely on the musings of Cliff.
Fortunately for me, professors at the university I attended had seen their share of CliffsNotes-driven submissions, and most were rejected — which meant I had to actually read the book.
But wasn’t that what I was paying for? I was attending college under the premise that I would further my education, not scam the system and myself in the process.
Fast-forward to students in universities now. Do they really want ChatGPT to be representative of their cerebral endeavors?
Are they happy receiving gratuitous grades based on AI?
Or do they reconcile themselves by telling themselves that just by reading what AI has gleaned from said book, they are still learning, only at an accelerated rate?
Speed-reading, instead of reading a book in a leisurely, enjoyable fashion, is like devouring a meal as fast as you can so that you barely taste the food. Sure, you may get your nutrition, but did you savor it?
The other problem: If you choose to forgo taking advantage of AI and your peers are using it exclusively, will your work be considered inferior in comparison?
Certainly, having to read “War and Peace” would take considerably longer than asking ChatGPT to analyze and compose it for you, but in some instances it’s better to be the tortoise than the hare.
Arlene Murphy, Ridgewood