Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The potential use of chatbots for cheating on academic assignments can be unfair to learners and even deny them a proper education, according to our survey of the opinions of university students in Germany.
“Whomever uses ChatGPT for larger tasks is cheating,” asserted one university student we spoke to.
Another student added that it is “unfair to other students who work without tools” whenever such AI technology is employed.
These students are particularly concerned about cheating on graded assignments such as tests, term papers, and theses.
Moreover, some students also suggested that chatbots can not only cheat the teachers and other students, but can also wind up cheating oneself.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to take something away from their studies should not and will not use them,” noted a third student. He added that he doubted that the use of chatbots corresponds “to the basic core of studying [and] the application of the knowledge you have learned.”
One student went even further to say that “you don’t learn anything just by typing in keywords in chatbots.”
Despite these generally negative assessments of using ChatGPT for assignments, some students do admit that they have at least experimented with using them.
One female university student found ChatGPT to be limited in its usefulness to her even when she did employ it.
Another student acknowledged that she is considering the use of ChatGPT for future homework assignments or parts of her bachelor thesis, but only “insofar as it is legal.”
Our sample was small and related data remains scarce; it is not clear what proportion of university students are now utilizing or considering the use of chatbots in their studies.
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