this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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The summer is over, schools are back, and the data is in: ChatGPT is mainly a tool for cheating on homework.::ChatGPT traffic dropped when summer began and schools closed. Now students are back, and they're using the AI tool again more.

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[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 94 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Terrible article, let me save you all the time. Students using ChatGPT = Cheating , there you go, that's the article.

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[–] Gutless2615@ttrpg.network 67 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Homework is a tool for repetition and drudgery. Kids are in school all day. They shouldn’t need homework.

[–] Someonelol@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

I hate to say it but there are simply so many subjects to cover in a single day that it's hard to reinforce the lessons learned in class within the given amount of time in a school session. Maybe if schools were structured in a way in which fewer subjects were taught each day would the lessons stick better without the need of homework.

[–] darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Homework should be reading, class should be demonstration and practice

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[–] soloner@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fr. Just do the homework in school, proctored, if it matters so much to the teacher.

Ultimately the kids will get a test, and it should include an essay section, which they obviously have to write on the spot. I don't really think it matters how much homework they did or didn't do or what tools they used to "cheat", as long as they can perform come test day that's what matters.

[–] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

do you think someone will be capable to write an essay if it is literally the first essay they ever write, since they were using AI all the previous times? This is like reading solved math equations and believing that in a test you'll be able to solve them on the spot, without having tried to solve any by yourself before.

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[–] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Homework is a way to get parents involved because there is literally no way to teach kids everything they need to learn at school.

It’s a pitifully failed way to try and get parents involved because in the end the vast majority literally don’t give a shit.

My sister is a teacher and she’s constantly on about how little time parents put into their kids education. Note that she teaches affluent kids, I’d assume this is ten times worse in homes where both parents work or single parent homes with few resources.

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[–] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 59 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Clearly an article written to fit a headline rather than the other way around. They talk about use in education settings as a sign that the use cases are limited, despite accounting for only a 12% increase.

In other news, pencil use is up 100% in the last month, signaling that pencils have limited use cases and are only good for cheating on homework.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Bro the capability of a pencil is a far better medium to expresses concepts. One could argue that a pencils ability to express shades of grey exceeds the capability of the pen. In some ways the pen has an effect of finality.

[–] VictorPrincipum@sh.itjust.works 58 points 1 year ago (4 children)

“You can use AI such as ChatGPT or Copilot on your senior projects, just make sure the code works, you understand it enough to document it, and your sponsor is ok with external code use” - paraphrased from my Software Engineering department head about our senior capstone projects.

“I have the kids ask ChatGPT for an essay and then have the (8th grade) kids treat it like a rough draft so they have practice editing it” - my English teacher Father

The best way to handle it is to embrace and use it to augment your skills, much like calculators in math classes.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Both of these methods require the student to understand the work. My old man brain insists they should have to code assembly from scratch and walk through snow storms to a library for their essay research, but in reality this is likely how this technology will be used. It's a practical approach. The 8th grade version should probably include fact checking.

[–] June@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m thinking of LLMs like calculators when I was in school.

It’s good to have a fundamental understanding of how it all works, but let the tool be the workhorse and just learn to validate.

[–] gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you can understand how subtraction or multiplication works, but if you don't do them repeatedly in your head and on paper you will end up needing a calculator for the most ridiculous things. Like getting change or splitting a bill with a friend, or whatever.

[–] Zeoic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To be fair, I dont think the people growing up with calculators in class and using chat gpt will be using cash at all. Not sure the last time I have even held physical currency, honestly. While your splitting a bill part might remain, we dont really need to worry about calculating change anymore.

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[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Really it needs to start a little younger: in 5th or 6th grade they should be writing short essays in class, by hand, and then move onto outlining for larger essays, and then they can start using AI to do the drafts at home.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was definitely outlining and writing essays in early grades but was on an accelerated track. My friends from the neighborhood who went to a different junior high entered high school without ever have done this. That blew my mind at the time and still does today decades later.

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It blows mine, too. I remember having to do the outlines and hating it, but it really helps you understand the structure of an essay even if you never write that way again.

I think outlining will actually become an important tool with generative AI. For example, I used it to generate a letter of recommendation last week. So to do that, I had to:

  • Write a prompt with enough background for the AI to work with, and include all my talking points
  • Generate the output
  • Read over everything to make sure what it generated was relevant and accurate
  • Edit the draft to reflect my voice, add a sentence or two to emphasize things I wanted to stand out, remove some of the fluff, etc.

It still turned what was probably an hour’s worth of work into 15 minutes, but at least currently you need to understand what you’re doing to use it this way. Specifically, knowing how to outline made it easy to write a concise yet detailed prompt so I could generate what I wanted on the first try.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A calculator calculates. An AI bullshits.

The only thing ChatGPT can actually do might be marketing speeches, since they are nonsensical to start with and made by things pretending to be humans.

[–] foo@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's arguable that most of what we generate is mostly vague partially inaccurate bullshit.

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[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The data is in: Business Insider is mainly a tool.

[–] float@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In many countries, schools only care about grades. I was pretty good at getting good grades by understanding what will be tested and minimizing the effort to get there. I would've totally used ChatGPT to do my homework.

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[–] pc_admin@aussie.zone 17 points 1 year ago

Homework shouldn't even exist anymore, it's antiquated and gives kids no work/life balance. (It might actually be a conspiracy to condition them to being worked to death.)

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago

However, if usage is only recovering because students are back, that may be a bad sign because it suggests there's a limited range of use cases for ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.

Or maybe kids have always been the early adopters for computer tech?

[–] Water1053@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

At work when I write certain emails or code snippets I'll paste them into ChatGPT and ask it to make the email sound "more professional" or "optimize this code." ChatGPT also talks to me like SHODAN from System Shock 😆

[–] BlueBockser@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope you know what you're doing. That's a good way to share company secrets with outsiders, also it's uncertain whether you're even legally allowed to use the resulting code.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And how do your propose to stop it? The cats out of the bag, you need to design better homework.

[–] Afghaniscran@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

I don't understand why anyone wants to stop it. I'm a teacher and since ChatGPT came out, my job got so much easier. I will say, ahead of my examples, that I proofread everything it creates and make sure all the facts are straight before submitting anything, but it's still a lot quicker.

I can use it to provide feedback on students work, I use it to write up lesson plans and schemes of work, I use it to draft emails, I use it to give me ideas for activities etc.

99.9% of the time there are parts I need to edit or delete due to irrelevance but it's done the bulk of the work. This is the same for students work, if they don't proofread it they will most likely hand in incorrect work.

[–] specterspectre@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Handwritten assignments are going to make a comeback. It's hard to cheat through an essay you have to write on the spot.

[–] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah I mean just make homework worthless and the cams everything.

Pretty simple. College professors have been doing this forever

[–] nymwit@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

discussion in here looking like old r/teenagers with predictable takes

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 7 points 1 year ago

Trends don’t confirm hypotheses like this one. And they don’t appear to have the data for a proper causal analysis. At best, they have an interesting data point.

[–] ChronosWing@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's a godsend honestly. I just went back to school at damn near 40 and with a full time job. ChatGPT has made getting through my school work so much easier and faster. I would have never had the patience or time to do college work without it.

[–] SchizoDenji@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Only if you don't have the patience to use Chatgpt properly.

[–] pec@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

So the homework is encouraging kids to explore a real life tool and the teacher can look at the result and corrects any issue with the result thus guiding the students towards a appropriate usage.

It's a good thing.

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[–] ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Egh Moody adults are ignorant to how it works, how to prompt well, and are scared of using it at work.

Kids are going to gobble that shit up. It's being used for cheating until the kids get into the workforce.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


ChatGPT was supposed to be the fastest-growing tech product in history, so this reversal got the technosphere theorizing as to why the chatbot wasn't so hot anymore.

Then there's the amusing comparison with interest in Minecraft, a popular video game that kids love to play when they're not using ChatGPT to cheat on their homework.

However, if usage is only recovering because students are back, that may be a bad sign because it suggests there's a limited range of use cases for ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.

Mark Shmulik, a top internet analyst at Bernstein, made this point at the start of the summer, when usage fell.

In other words, if a big part of ChatGPT growth is driven by cheating students, this means the technology, or at least the chatbot format, may not be the dominant computing platform of the future.

OpenAI did release this guide for teachers at the end of August, which suggests ways to use ChatGPT in the classroom, including prompts and lesson plans.


The original article contains 470 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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