Students Should Be Allowed to Use ChatGPT For Schoolwork

Being Censored ’24

ChatGPT’s #1 Fan

Friends, faculty, students and all members of the Trinity Community, I bring to you today an argument of great importance to this esteemed institution’s hardworking population. I believe, in all sincerity and surely without a sliver of sarcasm, that we must integrate ChatGPT into our learning experience. 

For those who are uninformed of this great new technology, I will do you the incredibly valuable favor of explaining it. ChatGPT is a new software made by OpenAI, a company founded by NBA legend Allen “AI” Iverson. ChatGPT is a form of generative AI that chats with the user, which means that AI generates responses to questions asked by users. However, AI is only one man, so he made a program that automatically gives people responses to their questions. Naturally, the Trinity administration quickly responded to this new development, and most professors have banned it from being used in their courses.

However, despite their good intentions, the decision by faculty to restrict the use of ChatGPT harms students. (And the professors too, maybe? I think saying that would make this more compelling. Olivia, please advise). We students receive a lot of work. On top of having to skim through hundreds of pages of reading every week, we have to complete homework assignments that can take several hours away from the already very limited amount of time students have every week. ChatGPT can help students decrease the volume of work that they have to do. Papers? Just give ChatGPT a prompt. Code? Just ask ChatGPT to make it and pray that it actually works. Discussion questions based on the reading? Just pretend you understood it and repeat what the person before you said but with different wording. Lab? With the next update, AI himself will show up in your place. Using ChatGPT for trivial, menial assignments will allow students to spend more time on other stuff, like day drinking. College is a busy time, and those with a cramped schedule — student athletes, people with jobs, and failsons — could use some extra time. ChatGPT can give them that. 

“But what about academic integrity? What about intellectual rigor? What about ensuring that students understand the material and can apply their knowledge?” The Student Handbook defines “intellectual honesty [as] doing our own work and fully crediting the work of others if we use their ideas in our own work.” Because ChatGPT just uses a program to respond to questions, no human element is involved. A program does not think, so it is not an “other” with original ideas. That’s just basic philosophy. Students who ask ChatGPT questions are just using their own words; so, the only person involved in creating the content is the student. Therefore, a student who uses ChatGPT is not violating intellectual honesty, because only their ideas are involved. Checkmate.

I mentioned a benefit for professors too, right? Well, if people can use ChatGPT to create content, it must also be able to review and grade content. That will save them time too! So, we just let students complete assignments with ChatGPT and let professors grade with ChatGPT, and everyone’s happy! Soon enough, ChatGPT will be able to start assigning homework and generating student responses without the middlemen, saving even more time! At that point, nobody will even need to make course plans, attend class or study, because ChatGPT will handle everything. Who knows, maybe we can do that in the workplace too. And why stop there? How about we let AI take over all societal functions? Finally, we will all be free to spend our days however we want to. Thank you Mr. Iverson!