Ethical Issues and Risks to Consider

ChatGPT is a game changer. It seems that virtually everyone is talking about ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an example of an artificial intelligence system in the form of a language model that can produce humanlike text. It allows users to ask questions and receive immediate responses. It is perfect for higher education, although educators should become aware of its limitations discussed below and, in particular, the trustworthiness of its responses, before deciding to use it.

What is It?

As an artificial language model, ChatGPT is dependent on the data it is fed to make inferences and return accurate information. Using a wide range of internet data, ChatGPT can help users answer questions, write articles, program code, and engage in in-depth conversations on a substantial range of topics.

GPT 3, a member of the OpenAI’s family of language models, was launched in 2020. It produces quality text only ten percent of the time, much faster than GPT 2, a previous model. In November 2022, Open AI introduced a chat interface to the model, GPT 3.5, and according to research the public response was staggering: 90 days later the chatbot had registered over 100 million users. In early March 2023, OpenAI replaced GPT 3.5 with GPT 3.5 Turbo and two weeks later, it launched an advanced version.

On November 12, 2024, Fabio Duarte wrote a blog that reported the following:

Top 5 ChatGPT User Statistics

• ChatGPT currently has over 180 million users
• In just 5 days, ChatGPT surpassed 1 million users
• ChatGPT gets approximately 600 million visits per month
• Around 65% of ChatGPT's social media traffic comes via YouTube
• Around 12% of ChatGPT's users are American

Ethical Issues

I have previously blogged about the ethical issues in using ChatGPT. Its use raises ethical questions about the possibility of biased inputs, biased and inaccurate outputs, data privacy, copyright infringement, reliability of responses, plagiarism and cheating, transparency, and accountability. Of particular importance is whether the results produced by ChatGPT are trustworthy.

Reports of students using AI to do their homework for them have prompted educators to think about how they affect education. Some have raised concerns about how language models can plagiarize existing work or allow students to cheat. OpenAI is reportedly working to develop "mitigations" that will help people detect text automatically generated by ChatGPT.

Educationally, Chat GPT can provide help to students in a variety of areas including research assistance, helping users answer questions, writing essays, solving problems, analyzing and interpreting data and replacing search engines. Educators need to be aware of the factors discussed in this blog in deciding whether to allow students to use the chatbot model.

Pittelkow decided to try ChatGPT and asked the bot if it could tell her more about the ethics of AI. In response, it did not hesitate to point out that the field of ethics in AI is concerned with the moral implications of the development and use of the technology, pointing to a range of ethical topics on bias and fairness, privacy, responsibility and accountability, job displacement, and algorithmic transparency.

She also asked how ChatGPT can be used ethically. The bot suggested that being respectful, avoiding spreading misinformation, protecting personal information, and using ChatGPT responsibly, are all ethical issues to consider. Avoiding bias in entering data and analyzing it is of great concern. The data entering the system is only useful if impartiality can be assured.

Generative AI systems like ChatGPT can give inaccurate or misleading results because of prompts that are too vague but also from poor data sources. The limitation of the technology means it can experience problems on relatively simple queries.

Assessing Cheating

The problem as I see it is to develop a counteracting response program to ChatGPT and others that will surely follow take time to develop and, meanwhile, lots of cheating goes on. What can be done about it? A good place to start is to discuss the ethics of using ChatGPT with students. Beyond that, a harsh penalty should be meted out to students who have used it in their assignments, assuming this can be proven. In this case, to get it right the devil is in the details. Educators are cautioned that ChatGPT is dependent on the data it is fed to make inferences and return accurate information. According to Pavlik, given its ability to produce massive amounts of data instantly, students may use it for cheating on examinations, homework, and assignments. Cotton suggests that this can lead to discrepancies in learning results that harm the quality of teaching and learning.

Educators should also check out the availability of programs that can assess whether students simply copied information provided by ChatGPT, such as the software Turnitin. It looks for unique patterns in the language used by ChatGPT, such as overly complex sentences, unnatural phrasing, or repetitive vocabulary, which can differ from typical human writing. Some tools compare submitted text to a large database of known AI-generated content to identify matches.

Educators should also weigh the potential harmful effects of allowing students to use ChatGPT with benefits such as it can facilitate using advanced teaching methodologies, promote interactive learning, and develop students’ critical thinking skills. ChatGPT can be used to solve complex problems, generate summaries and reports, make recommendations, and conduct data analysis.

Enhancing Student Learning

The purpose of using ChatGPT in the classroom is to enhance student learning. ChatGPT can be used as a tool to provide an initial reference point that is built on through the analysis of information to a problem at hand.

ChatGPT is trained on a large data set, which may include biased or outdated information. This can result in the generation of biased data or incorrect text, particularly in sensitive or controversial topics. Instructors should carefully evaluate whether this is the case in analyzing responses from ChatGPT.

ChatGPT’s usefulness is based on its ability to provide information that accurately explains key concepts, reliably analyzes data, and clearly reports the results of processing information that it is fed. Several studies have shown that ChatGPT lacks a deep understanding of the meaning of the text it generates. This can lead to errors and inconsistencies in the output, particularly when generating text for more complex or nuanced topics such as provided in case studies.

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

A common criticism of ChatGPT is that it may prevent students from developing their critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is an issue given that ChatGPT is used to analyze, evaluate, and form judgments, processes that may not be fully evolved. Burney and co-authors believe it has the potential to revolutionize the learning for educators and students including to foster students’ critical thinking skills. Bai and his co-authors, contend that, ChatGPT can be used to develop various skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving and communication by generating scenarios, providing feedback, and offering suggestions through assignments requiring students to critically evaluate responses generated by ChatGPT. They also point out that the model can serve as an initial reference point for research projects, encouraging students to verify, elaborate upon, or even challenge the information provided. They suggest that educators should incorporate activities that promote the cultivation of critical thinking.

Abramson, however, contends that rather than weaken student effort, AI can help prepare students for the real world by encouraging critical thinking about class concepts. Critical thinking skills enable students to analyze a set of facts and decide what is relevant to the solution of a problem and what is not. These skills can be used to resolve ethical conflicts that are presented in case studies, such as the ones used as the basis for this paper. One problem is if the answers provided by ChatGPT are not reliable then students would be using erroneous results as the basis for judgments that apply critical thinking skills to a dataset.

Research Studies

As would be expected, very little research has been conducted on whether ChatGPT responses to questions and/or case studies are better than, about the same as, or worse than student responses. A study in 2023 by dozens of educators led by David Wood considered how ChatGPT 3.5 performs on accounting assessment questions. Dozens of educators contributed to the study to determine how ChatGPT 3.5 performs on accounting assessment questions. The authors used data from 14 countries and 186 institutions and compared ChatGPT and student performance for 28,085 questions from accounting assessments and textbook test banks. As of January 2023, ChatGPT provided correct answers for 56.5 percent of questions and partially correct answers for an additional 9.4 percent of questions. When considering point values for questions, students significantly outperform ChatGPT with 76.7 percent average on assessments compared to 47.5 percent for ChatGPT if no partial credit is given. ChatGPT performs better than the student average for 15.8 percent of assessments when partial credit is included.

In conclusion, while there are potential benefits to the use of ChatGPT, it is important for educators to address the ethical concerns raised by its use before deciding to allow it for their students. This includes developing ethical guidelines and standards, involving all stakeholders in the conversation, and being proactive in addressing the potential impact of AI on the educational process. By doing so, educators can take the steps necessary to ensure that the use of ChatGPT does not have any negative effects such as biased results that could be harmful to the user.  

Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on December 5, 2024. Find out more about his professional activities and sign up for his newsletter on his website (https://www.stevenmintzethics.com/).