Is ChatGPT the future of learning? Educators, students discuss how schools can adapt to potential of AI-driven world

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  • Hong Kong teachers and professors assert the importance of balancing the benefits and downsides of artificial intelligence in education
  • Two pupils – one at an international school and another studying the local curriculum – share how they see the technology shifting their learning processes
Kelly Fung |
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Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that has gone viral for its ability to craft humanlike responses to prompts. Photo: dpa

At an assembly last week, a pastor at a secondary school in Tai Po found an innovative way to engage the 200 students sitting in the hall – he asked a chatbot to share its perspective on being a student in Hong Kong.

What he used was ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool that has stunned the world since its launch last November. Since the tool is not available in Hong Kong, the speaker used a VPN to access it. With just a prompt, ChatGPT can create content such as essays and poetry, spurring discussions about its impact on education.

In the crowd, Melody Ma Jingmao witnessed the power of the chatbot for the first time. “I’m surprised to learn that ChatGPT is that powerful,” said the 16-year-old student at Carmel Pak U Secondary School. “I don’t have the ability to write such amazing things in both Chinese and English.”

Face Off: Should ChatGPT be allowed in school?

The next day, the Form Five student created an account. She fed the chatbot debate topics and essay prompts in Chinese and requested sample English phrases for a job application letter. The replies were “super detailed”, she said.

Now, Melody is considering if ChatGPT can replace the English and Chinese tutorial classes meant to prepare her for the university entrance exams next year.

“The tutors ... give us sample writings, some ‘must-recite’ phrases, sentences or formats – which I can get on ChatGPT free of charge,” she said.

Form Five student Melody Ma tested ChatGPT by asking it to write a job application letter. Photo: Handout

Rethinking education

ChatGPT, which garnered a million registered users in the first week of its launch, has sparked a heated debate about the future of education.

Baptist University and the University of Hong Kong have banned AI tools like ChatGPT, citing concerns about inaccuracy and academic integrity.

But some institutions are embracing the technology.

Sean McMinn, director of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s (HKUST) Centre for Education Innovation, supported the use of AI tools in schools.

Hot Topics: ChatGPT’s challenges and charms for the classroom

“Generative AI tools are not going to go away. They will only adapt and become more advanced ... It is our responsibility as educators to prepare students for an AI-driven world and future work,” said McMinn, who conducted a three-part professional development series on AI and higher education.

Commenting on the ban enforced by other institutions, McMinn believed most educators were acting in the best interests of students, saying: “This is ... full of uncertainties, and many people are simply speculating about what could happen.”

“Embracing the technology doesn’t mean we do so uncritically. We must be mindful of both the beneficial and detrimental outcomes of using ChatGPT,” he added.

Sean McMinn is the director of the Centre for Education Innovation at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Photo: Handout

Frederick Fong Tsz-ho, an associate professor in mathematics at HKUST, encouraged students to treat the tool as “a dynamic, friendly, and modern version of the encyclopaedia”. But he cautioned that the AI-generated content could still be fallible.

“In my maths courses, it is perfectly OK that students use ChatGPT in their homework, provided that they pointed out that their answers were AI-generated, and that they have critically judged the accuracy of the AI-generated responses,” he said.

“I am not worried about students blindly copying AI-generated answers in my homework as they are most likely inaccurate, and sometimes, it just ‘dodges’ my questions by quoting relevant facts from Wikipedia.”

He added that ChatGPT could assist with routine tasks, but it would not be helpful for assignments like those in his classes that demand deeper thinking.

“Why should we still spend time training students to do tasks that can be done by AI in a second? We should teach them to do things that AI cannot do,” he noted.

Explainer: What is ChatGPT and why are schools blocking it?

A secondary teacher surnamed Chow*, who has 11 years of experience teaching English in Hong Kong, saw ChatGPT as “another platform for students to do research”.

“It’s a life skill they need to learn – how to get useful information from the internet and manipulate it for their good,” said the teacher from a Tai Po school.

But she noted that it was not ideal for primary school students to have access to AI tools as they might not be mature enough to use them properly.

After ChatGPT’s launch, language teachers at Chow’s school discussed how to train students’ writing skills, for example, by using more in-class writing tasks, she said.

Post-ChatGPT world

Last month, the International Baccalaureate (IB) announced that students could quote from content created by ChatGPT. Madeline Hui, 15, is among the IB students expecting changes in her education.

“From what my teachers have been warning us about, there have been talks about changing assignments to grade our work based on the thesis and our research process,” said the Grade 10 student at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong (CDNIS).

She explained that a typical summative task – such as writing about the causes and consequences of World War II – would no longer be viable, and instead, more emphasis would be put on the thinking process.

“The difficulty of the task would then become choosing from the vast selection of information generated by ChatGPT,” she said, adding that she had yet to use the tool.

ChatGPT is able to answer queries and engage in conversation. Photo: Bloomberg

Madeline agreed that the AI chatbot would improve the quality of her education, although CDNIS had not yet mandated a school-wide change to curriculum.

“Once educators pivot our learning to focus more on creativity and critical thinking, AI will be a staple in education,” she said, noting that subjects including history and English now demanded greater critical thinking skills.

Both McMinn and Fong emphasised that this was a pivotal moment in education. McMinn said: “Many educators still focus on teaching knowledge content. But that will not work in a post-ChatGPT world.”

Fong noted educators should not “waste” time on rote learning. “So far, AI is still not good at creative, artistic and deep-thinking work such as music, literature or pure mathematics ... It is a good time for educators to rethink what kind of skills our next generations actually need.”

Chinese schoolchildren turning to ChatGPT to slash homework time

Like many educators, Madeline is concerned about the repercussions of students relying on ChatGPT. “We will lose the valuable skills of communicating clearly,” she said.

“It seems to me that the days of writing, fully comprehending and fact-checking a source are gone,” she said, adding that writing would become a “compiling and curating” task.

McMinn stressed that students needed to develop AI literacy skills – the ability to wield AI technology effectively, for example, by verifying all the information in a response from ChatGPT.

Without this, he said students risked spreading harmful bias, misinformation or personal data, or making decisions that could be detrimental to themselves or others.

“ChatGPT is only a tool to assist with and, possibly, facilitate a task. It should be used as part of a process to accomplish a goal – not be the goal,” he emphasised.

*Full name withheld at interviewee’s request.

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