Education
Text robots allowed at NRW schools without cheating
Text robots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot don’t want to be categorically left out of schools in NRW. photo
© Richard Drew/AP/dpa
It is not yet entirely clear what artificial intelligence such as the chat bot ChatGPT can be used for. In NRW, however, it is welcome as an aid in schools – but with an announcement.
Working with text robots should not be categorically prohibited in North Rhine-Westphalia’s schools. This emerges from a guide to dealing with artificial intelligence (AI), which the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Education published on Thursday in Düsseldorf.
However, students who use artificial intelligence to complete their assignments must declare this. If this does not happen or is untruthfully denied, this will be assessed as the use of inadmissible aids and as an attempt at deception.
In accordance with the relevant examination rules and regulations, such cases would then have the same consequences as all other cheating or irregularities, the guideline explains. Even if it is not a question of plagiarism in the true sense, it is a matter of deceiving the authorship. As a preventative measure, tasks should be set in such a way that they cannot be completed solely with the help of AI.
Artificial intelligence as an individual funding tool
On the one hand, AI can help to individually promote language, writing and assessment skills, explained the Ministry of Education. For example, the text robot ChatGPT can structure texts, offer formulation and correction suggestions, and control writing processes through direct feedback. On the other hand, texts created in this way could also contain false statements and reproduce prejudices.
ChatGPT is an application that uses artificial intelligence to create extensive responses to text input. The text robot can, among other things, answer questions in different languages, summarize and evaluate texts, write poems or computer programs, translate texts or create multiple-choice tests. The program is able to take into account the connections between successive text entries, so that the impression of a conversation is created.