Is ChatGPT Today Like Wikipedia of the Past?
When I was in third grade, I was given an essay to write. I don’t remember what it was about, but I do remember the teacher explicitly saying, “Do not use Wikipedia; you cannot trust the information there.” At that time, Wikipedia was the new kid on the block, promising to provide all the information for our essays without needing to go to the library and look it up.
Fast-forward 20 years, and Wikipedia is now one of the most trusted sources of information. Although there’s still a lot of criticism—especially around political topics—if you want to read about Ancient Greek history or read about the life of Vincent Van Gogh, you’ll probably turn to Wikipedia.
I’m sure teachers today face a similar dilemma—whether to allow their students to use ChatGPT or not. ChatGPT definitely simplifies a lot of school assignments, but should we ban its use or rethink the assignments? The easiest approach is to ban it, but I believe the better option is to adapt to the changing dynamics of the world.
A great example I saw was in a class I took last year at university. The lecturer said he encouraged us to use ChatGPT. He was all in favor of using tools that speed up our work and allow us to focus on the meaningful parts. He even included a bonus section in the first assignment where, if you used an AI tool, you could explain what it helped you with and, conversely, where it fell short.
By doing this, he legitimized the use of AI tools in a critical way. You could use them, but you had to learn their limits. Acknowledge that they can be helpful in some tasks but less effective in others. Learn to use them to your advantage. After all, if you deny students something that you can’t enforce, they probably won’t stop using it—they’ll just use it without understanding its impact, fearing they might get “caught.”
I think AI is here to stay, and we should learn to work with it as an enabler, while keeping an eye on its limits.