Thinking Outside the Bot

Leitzinger said the research reflected how she had seen student essays change since ChatGPT was released in 2022, as both spelling errors and authentic insight became less common.

Sometimes students do not even change the font when they copy and paste from ChatGPT, she said.

But Leitzinger called for empathy for students, saying they can get confused when the use of AI is being encouraged by universities in some classes but is banned in others.

The usefulness of new AI tools is sometimes compared to the introduction of calculators, which required educators to change their ways.

But Leitzinger worried that students do not need to know anything about a subject before pasting their essay question into ChatGPT, skipping several important steps in the process of learning.

A student at a British university in his early 20s who wanted to remain anonymous told AFP he found ChatGPT was a useful tool for compiling lecture notes, searching the internet and generating ideas.

"I think that using ChatGPT to write your work for you is not right because it's not what you're supposed to be at university for," he said.

The problem goes beyond high school and university students.

Academic journals are struggling to cope with a massive influx of AI-generated scientific papers. Book publishing is also not immune, with one startup planning to pump out 8,000 AI-written books a year.

"Writing is thinking, thinking is writing, and when we eliminate that process, what does that mean for thinking?" Leitzinger asked.

- AFP