Artificial Intelligence is here and stronger than ever. On Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT, an OpenAI website, was released and has been increasing in popularity at a rapid pace. The core function of this site is to mimic human conversations, but it is not limited to that. ChatGPT is able to compose music, answer test questions, write a poem and play tic tac toe for example.

     Despite its wide variety of capabilities, ChatGPT is not without its limitations. One of the most significant concerns raised by the public is that ChatGPT is capable of creating responses to prompts that sound plausible but contain untrue information. While it does contain massive amounts of information, it is limited to the information that it has learned during its “Training Process”, which means that it doesn’t have information from some of the more recent events, for example, ChatGPTs knowledge on COVID-19 is based on data from 2020. Along with this, ChatGPT is unable to express political views or opinions. Even with these limitations, ChatGPT has still been able to obtain over a million users in the past couple months. But this amount of users is dangerous, due to the fact that ChatGPT mixes fact with fiction, which could potentially start the spread of untrue information. Aside from untrue information, according to Business Insider, many jobs are at risk due to the introduction of ChatGPT. Some of these jobs are tech jobs, media jobs, legal industry jobs, teachers and finance jobs.

      One of the main concerns from teachers is that they won’t be able to tell if a piece of work is AI generated or not. But ChatGPT just recently introduced a new tool that will try and determine the likelihood that a section of text is AI generated. Hellgate High School English teacher Jessica Gustafson has her own opinion on it. When asked if she trusts her students with ChatGPT, she does but said, “In a moment of stress, a human might be tempted to ask a robot to write an essay for them.” 

     Till this point, Gustafson has been doing essays online, but after understanding the capabilities of ChatGPT she made the decision that “everything will be handwritten from now on!”  Gustafson along with many other teachers across the country are realizing the harm that ChatGPT will have on the future generations. When asked what she believes can be done about the use of ChatGPT in school, Gustafson said, “Help students love learning so they don’t want to use a robot to do their homework.”    

     For many students, Chat GPT is an ideal tool for getting fast answers to their questions. But some students are aware of the possible risks that come with relying on AI. For example, Hellgate High School Junior, Lily Stearns says “I’ve used it once or twice to get more information on some things.” But she follows this by saying “ I know some of the information might not be completely accurate so I use it with that in mind.” Stearns acknowledges that there is a possibility of the information being inaccurate, but Stearns’ approach is not the norm. The majority of students are more likely to use ChatGPT as often as possible, unaware of the long-term effects on their learning. This widespread use of ChatGPT can be attributed to its convenience and ease.

    ChatGPT is an achievement in the field of natural language processing and a symbol of how far we have come with technology. Its ability to generate human-like text and perform a wide range of natural language tasks makes it a useful tool for both industry professionals and researchers.  So, are we seeing the beginning of an age of AI?