New York City Public Schools has blocked access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI model on its network and devices, an education website reports. Chalkbeat. The step is in between fears from instructors whose students will use ChatGPT to cheat on assignments, accidentally reveal errors in their work, or write an essay on in a way that will make them not study.
ChatGPT is a great language model created by OpenAI, and it is current access for free through any web browser during your trial period. People can use it to write essays, poetry, and technical documents (or even simulate a Linux console) at a level that can often pass for human writing—though it can still produce something very bold but recent reply.
Per Chalkbeat, NYC Department of Education spokeswoman Jenna Lyle said, “Due to concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns about the security and accuracy of content, access to ChatGPT is restricted on networks and devices that New York City Schools. A tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, not teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for education and life success.”
Academic concerns about large language models became widespread in September after someone on the OpenAI subreddit tell that they use GPT-3 (the basic technology behind ChatGPT) to write essays and answer questions for school projects. At that point, GPT-3 is only available through an API or special user interface through the OpenAI website and for a usage-based fee. After OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to a much larger audience for free on November 30, the calls of alarm became more widely between educators.
As a language prediction model, ChatGPT is a kind of neural network trained on the text of millions of books and websites. The model’s “knowledge” of typical word meanings helps it predict the most likely outcome after someone clicks on a prompt. So if you give a prompt such as “Maria ni a,” you can end the sentence with “little lamb,” pulling from frequent math groups among words that the AI model encounters during the training process. During a session with ChatGPT, the entire conversational history has the feeling that the model is trying to complete, albeit in the form of a conversation.
Although ChatGPT will be blocked on computer networks in NYC public schools, Chalkbeat reports that individual schools may request access to ChatGPT to study the technology behind it. And while it is unclear whether ChatGPT will have any dire effects on education, this move from within the largest school district in the US may encourage others to enact similar bans on the technology.