Imagine conversing with a machine that understands the meaning of almost every word you articulate or type and responds in almost human-like language. This is the promise of ChatGPT, an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. With the ability to produce text that is often indistinguishable from that of a human, ChatGPT has attracted the attention of researchers, developers, and the public.
But how can ChatGPT affect your children and their education?
From language understanding to chatbots and virtual assistants, artificial intelligence and machine learning can revolutionize the way children interact. "ChatGPT could affect the way children learn, work with information and interact with technology" says Ondrej Kubovic, ESET's Public Information Specialist in themethe Security.
Benefits of ChatGPT for Kids
ChatGPT has many potential benefits for children. For example, technology could be used to improve writing skills. Students can, for example, ask ChatGPT to give them a creative writing exercise or comment on their writing.
ChatGPT can also write jokes, song lyrics or fantasy stories. And maybe one day, it could even be used to provide personalized learning experiences for students.
The ESET expert believes that chatbots powered by machine learning can improve the accessibility of education and consulting in the future. ChatGPT can help young people as a digital advisor and offer useful advice.
For students with visual or hearing difficulties, language models could create better and more understandable text-to-speech or speech-to-text translations, facilitating their learning and communication. There are already browser extensions such as Talk-to-ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Risks for Children
Despite the advantages of ChatGPT, there are some risks involved in using it. The platform could be used to create fake news or propaganda.
“Models based on machine learning are useful, but they produce a lot of errors and nonsense that looks believable. At this stage, they sometimes confuse facts and present them as real facts, when they contain some truth but are not completely accurate. A form misinformations, that is, where, in this case, users consider the data to be accurate and spread it further," warns Kubovic.
Young children may be particularly vulnerable to such content, as they may not have reached the level of critical thinking required to assess the accuracy of the information. Or they may be tempted to use the results that ChatGPT offers to get their tasks done quickly. As parents, you should engage, for example, by playing with these tools and learning their limits with your children. You should also teach your children how to recognize misinformation and scams.
As with any advanced new technology, don't underestimate the risk collectionς ή αποθήκευσης προσωπικών δεδομένων χωρίς τη συγκατάθεση του χρήστη, λέει ο ειδικός της ESET. Στην περίπτωση του ChatGPT, υπάρχει επίσης ο κίνδυνος το μοντέλο να χειραγωγηθεί ώστε να δημιουργήσει επιβλαβές περιεχόμενο ή να ανακατευθύνει σε κάτι κακόβουλο. Η OpenAI γνωρίζει αυτούς τους περιορισμούς (τους παραθέτει μάλιστα στην by clicking here of) and claims to have taken steps to block inappropriate content.
Implications of ChatGPT for Education
The potential impact of ChatGPT on education is significant. Technology could transform the way students learn and engage with educational materials. Some educators are already rethinking how they assign homework to their students.
“New standards and approaches are introduced. Homework assignments, where students write a text on a specific topic citing only the facts, will slowly lose their meaning, as a well-written assignment can easily be produced by ChatGPT or similar chatbots in multiple languages,” explains Ondrej Kubovic. So instead of gathering factual information about a topic and writing it into a Wikipedia-like text, the emphasis will likely be more on the student's perspectives and the content.
Online tools can also significantly change the style of assignments and exercises. For example, the focus can be shifted to the handwritten tasks that are done directly in the classroom.
Teachers can also resort to assigning more group work to see different performances from their students. This can even affect the grading system, as teachers must emphasize students' creative contributions more than factual accuracy.
Teachers who know their students can recognize a radical change in their writing. But in the future, children will have AI tools at their fingertips. Teachers should accept this fact and should take advantage of a new tool for the benefit of teaching.
“ChatGPT will be constantly improving and getting better and better access to information extraction. But in the end, it is always up to the user to check the facts and verify that the results are correct and that there has been no misinterpretation,” concludes Kubovic.
