WASHINGTON (TND) — Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have advanced so much that some educators in the United States are worried students could use them to cheat in class and on exams.
These concerns have increased markedly after one professor put AI chatbot ChatGPT to the test to see how it would fare against a Master of Business Administration (MBA) exam. It passed.
Professor Christian Terwiesch of the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School of Business says the AI chatbot performed well enough on the final exam of an MBA core course that it "would have received a B to B- grade on the exam."
Terwiesch shared his findings in a research paper titled "Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA?" The AI chatbot was pitted against a final exam for the course "Operations Management."
[ChatGPT] does an amazing job at basic operations management and process analysis questions including those that are based on case studies," Terwiesch wrote, but added the AI fell short when it had to manage "more advanced process analysis questions."
The Wharton professor says the AI "performed well in the preparation of legal documents and some believe that the next generation of this technology might even be able to pass the bar exam."
Launched in Nov. 2022, AI chatbot ChatGPT is a "large language model" that can be used for "natural language processing tasks such as text generation and language translation" according to its developer OpenAI. "GPT" stands for "Generative Pretrained Transformer." The latest version is version 3.5.
One of the key features of ChatGPT is its ability to generate human-like text responses to prompts," OpenAI says. "This makes it useful for a wide range of applications, such as creating chatbots for customer service, generating responses to questions in online forums, or even creating personalized content for social media posts."
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently noted that while ChatGPT is currently "just in its infancy," it's incredible to "imagine what GPT 10 is going to look like."
However, it should also be noted that, as of today, even the most advanced AI can only operate within the confines of its programming.
For example, a few United States Marines managed to defeat an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system belonging to the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in a test run by using unconventional means.
So far, ChatGPT has attained online fame for its humorous attempts to answer complex questions from social media users. For example, it once suggested a good way to ensure "free and fair elections" was to install a "bouncy castle" at poll locations. It also hilariously gave its best shot at writing a love letter.
However, some are warning that AI could be used for nefarious means, with educators worried about the temptation students could face with the possibility of an AI doing all their coursework for them.
One thing we all know for sure is that ChatGPT is not going away. If anything, these AI techniques will continue to get better and better. Faculty and university administrators need to invest to educate themselves," the dean of Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, Andrew Karolyi, said to the Financial Times.
I’m of the mind that AI isn’t going to replace people, but people who use AI are going to replace people," the head of ETS Product Innovation Labs Kara McWilliams also told the Financial Times.
Terwiesch himself likens ChatGPT's incoming effect on the world to that of the impact electronic calculators had on the corporate world.
Prior to the introduction of calculators and other computing devices, many firms employed hundreds of employees whose task it was to manually perform mathematical operations such as multiplications or matrix inversions,” Terwiesch wrote as the opening of his research findings.
Obviously, such tasks are now automated, and the value of the associated skills has dramatically decreased," Terwiesch added. "In the same way any automation of the skills taught in our MBA programs could potentially reduce the value of an MBA education."
Microsoft announced on Monday that it will make a multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI, ChatGPT's creator. An exact amount was not specified, but Semafor previously reported that Microsoft was in talks to invest up to $10 billion in the AI company.
"We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in the Monday release.
The investment from Microsoft hopes to help OpenAI accelerate breakthroughs in its AI technology, and also aid both companies in commercializing the developed advanced technologies.
