Sciences Po Paris is well aware of the appearance of ChatGPT in schools. Students are warned: it is better to avoid using it, because if the use of any AI to do homework is proven, sanctions will be taken.
The education system is gearing up to meet the new challenge posed by ChatGPT. In New York City, the decision was made to ban it in schools. A mistrust that is also found in France, since the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris) is also taking measures to curb the use of this tool.
This is the meaning of a message which has just been sent to the teaching staff, signed by Sergeï Guriev, the director of training and research. ” The use of ChatGPT at Sciences Po, or any other tool using artificial intelligence is […] for the moment strictly prohibited during the production of written or oral work by students. »
The existence of this reminder, visible online, was reported on Twitter by teaching staff, such as the professor and lecturer David Colon on January 25, 2023, but also by BFM TV. For students who violate this instruction, disciplinary sanctions are likely to be pronounced. This can lead to exclusion from Sciences Po, or even from higher education altogether.
ChatGPT is a conversational agent designed by the American company OpenAI. Its primary ability is to process written requests by formulating structured and articulated responses, imitating natural language. The quality of the answers has been the subject of an ongoing debate since it opened to the public in November 2022. There are some very good and some very poor.
New game of cat and mouse between student and teacher
Sciences Po’s decision, however, questions the ability of the establishment – and of the entire education system, in fact – to be able to identify an assignment produced or assisted by ChatGPT. This can no doubt be seen if the student, who has always been mediocre, suddenly pulls out a brilliant copy. Or if the exercise contains absurd errors unworthy of the level expected at such or such level of schooling.
But apart from these relatively obvious scenarios, could we know what comes from a student or from ChatGPT? Will this tool open the floodgates to even more cheating in middle school, high school, and beyond? The press has already reported miscellaneous facts of this type, in France and abroad, and it has been shown that ChatGPT has the level to pass an exam.
There have been tools for detecting plagiarism for a long time, especially at university. The eruption of ChatGPT constitutes a challenge for this software, which is lagging behind in the face of these new forms of automatic production. But a response begins to be organized. Also, OpenAI could include some sort of secret watermark to indicate the artificial nature of the response.
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