In cybersecurity
Check Point Research and others noted that ChatGPT was capable of writing phishing emails and malware, especially when combined with OpenAI Codex. OpenAI CEO wrote that advancing software could pose “(for example) a huge cybersecurity risk” and also continued to predict “we could get to real AGI (artificial general intelligence) in the next decade, so we have to take the risk of that extremely seriously”. Altman argued that, while ChatGPT is “obviously not close to AGI”, one should “trust the exponential. Flat looking backwards, vertical looking forwards.”
In academia
ChatGPT can write introduction and abstract sections of scientific articles, which raises ethical questions. Several papers have already listed ChatGPT as co-author.
In The Atlantic magazine, Stephen Marche noted that its effect on academia and especially application essays is yet to be understood. California high school teacher and author Daniel Herman wrote that ChatGPT would usher in “the end of high school English”. In the Nature journal, Chris Stokel-Walker pointed out that teachers should be concerned about students using ChatGPT to outsource their writing, but that education providers will adapt to enhance critical thinking or reasoning. Emma Bowman with NPR wrote of the danger of students plagiarizing through an AI tool that may output biased or nonsensical text with an authoritative tone: “There are still many cases where you ask it a question and it’ll give you a very impressive-sounding answer that’s just dead wrong.”
Joanna Stern with The Wall Street Journal described cheating in American high school English with the tool by submitting a generated essay. Professor Darren Hick of Furman University described noticing ChatGPT’s “style” in a paper submitted by a student. An online GPT detector claimed the paper was 99.9 percent likely to be computer-generated, but Hick had no hard proof. However, the student in question confessed to using GPT when confronted, and as a consequence failed the course. Hick suggested a policy of giving an ad-hoc individual oral exam on the paper topic if a student is strongly suspected of submitting an AI-generated paper. Edward Tian, a senior undergraduate student at Princeton University, created a program, named “GPTZero,” that determines how much of a text is AI-generated, lending itself to being used to detect if an essay is human written to combat academic plagiarism.
As of January 4, 2023, the New York City Department of Education has restricted access to ChatGPT from its public school internet and devices.
In a blinded test, ChatGPT was judged to have passed graduate-level exams at the University of Minnesota at the level of a C+ student and at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a B to B- grade. (Wikipedia)
Next time we will talk about Ethical concerns of the ChatGPT.
Post time: Feb-14-2023