“ChatGPT, it becomes obsessive”, confides Gabriel*, 18 years old, in final class. Like many of his classmates, the high school student this year tested the virtual conversational agent launched in France last November by the Californian start-up OpenAI. Because from a simple question and in a few seconds, this conversational robot is able to synthesize a book, formulate a dissertation plan, translate a text, produce an effective commentary…
A godsend for Gabriel. “The first time I used it was to laugh with my friends. And then I started using it for my work. The more you use it, the more you want to start over. When you have easy access, it’s hard to resist,” he continues. Objective for him: to prepare philosophy dissertations, EMC homework (moral and civic education)… and even one of the two subjects of his major oral exam. Julie, 15, a second-year student, also admits having “used a lot” of the chatbot this year, whether in economics and social sciences, history or even French. “Sometimes it was just to have a basis for an assignment: for example, to obtain a plan, or a summary of information. But also sometimes to do an entire job,” she says.
No measures announced by the ministry
Ditto for Doria, 19, in final year, who carried out entire dissertations with the tool, or used it “to find definitions”. Other students, like Simon, 18 and in his final year, preferred caution. Use ChatGPT, yes, but never for graded work: “There are too many risks of getting caught, and the consequences are serious,” he believes. Some English or history homework has been made easier thanks to the chatbot, but that’s it.
For the time being, the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, does not seem alarmed by the intrusion of ChatGPT into the school life of high school students: “We are monitoring this closely, but we are not in a catastrophic situation with major difficulties,” he said in May on France Info. “We will have to intervene in an intelligent way, that is to say make the most of AI while ensuring that it is not put at the service of strategies for circumventing the learning of knowledge”, he added. Asked by 20 minutesthe Ministry of Education did not specify whether specific recommendations to teachers on the subject would be presented at the start of the school year, as well as a possible warning to students about the use of the chatbot.
Good grades at the key?
If some of the students have therefore used ChatGPT a lot, it is also because they have often obtained good results: “I had 17/20 in philosophy essays. says Doria about the homework she did with the robot. Lucie also believes that the game was worth the candle: “I got a 17 in SES (Economic and Social Sciences) when I hadn’t written anything by myself”. Results that she would not have obtained on her own, according to her. As for Gabriel, thanks to the AI, he was close to perfection by obtaining 20 in his philosophy dissertation. “Even while working, I would not have had this note,” he believes.
Testimonials that invite us to question the vigilance of certain teachers vis-à-vis the robot. Of these four students, educated in both public and private high schools, none were made aware by their teachers of the dangers of cheating with ChatGPT and the risks they would run if they were caught red-handed. “They barely mentioned the existence of ChatGPT, and they didn’t tell us anything about using it. Anyway, for homework, they can forbid us to use it but can’t really control us,” says Doria. And none of the four high school students were caught red-handed either. Proof that some teachers have not yet taken the measure of the phenomenon.
Do with
ChatGPT content detection software exists, but high schools are rarely equipped with it. But according to Pap Ndiaye, the teachers would not need it. “When ChatGPT is asked to write a dissertation in a field, it is very easy for the teacher to spot that it is not the student who has written it,” he said on France. Info.
Aware of the fact that the tools using artificial intelligence are constantly evolving, some teachers, like Lucie’s, have decided to go with it. And even to encourage their students to use the conversational robot: “You can use ChatGPT to write all the text, as long as the oral presentation is successful” he suggested to them for the preparation of presentations. Others have chosen to change the way they assess students. “ChatGPT is the modern version of Wikipedia. The response of teachers is to give few marks to homework, or to make preparatory work for an assessment in class, ”he notes. High school students can therefore expect to have more tests on the table in the coming years…
*Names have been changed