- A Bronx high school teacher asked ChatGPT to make a lesson plan and script on wearable tech, per NYT.
- Students followed the lesson as part of an experiment — and they were unhappy with the results.
ChatGPT is entering the classroom — and some students aren't a fan, the New York Times reported.
Marisa Shuman, a computer science teacher at the Young Women's Leadership School of the Bronx in New York, prompted OpenAI's ChatGPT artificial intelligence bot to generate a lesson plan on wearable technology like smartwatches for her advanced programming class as part of a learning experiment, according to the Times.
The point of the experiment was for Shuman's 11th and 12th-grade students to critically analyze how effective AI can be as a teacher.
They weren't happy with the results.
Students that read the AI-generated information on the health benefits and business around wearable tech said that it reminded them of marketing copy or glowing product reviews.
Jayda Arias, an 18-year old student, told the Times that the lesson was "very bland" and that it "reminded me of fourth grade." Alia Goddess, a 17-year old student, called ChatGPT "biased."
By the end of the lesson, the students concluded that teachers should not be using ChatGPT, admitting that Ms. Shuman's self-made course materials, charisma, and thought-provoking discussion questions are more engaging than the chat bot.
The 20-minute lesson plan, along with an AI-generated script, included dialogue for opening remarks, warm-up questions, in-class exercises, directions for in-class assignments, and a closing discussion.
The classroom experiment comes as teachers at schools inside and outside of New York grapple with how to integrate ChatGPT into their curriculums.
ChatGPT is an AI chat bot that draws from milions of data points from the web to generate conversational answers to questions. Since it was released last November, users have asked the bot to write articles, help with coding, and even offer dating advice. Even though ChatGPT has the potential to help employees be more productive, the bot is also at risk of spewing misinformation and producing bland writing. It may even replace jobs in the future.
While some school districts and colleges have issued bans on using ChatGPT for classwork to prevent cheating and plagiarism, schools like Young Women's Leadership School of the Bronx are making AI chat bots a topic of discussion in computer science courses despite the bans.
In fact, the New York City school system — which serves around 900,000 students, per the Times — is training a group of computer science educators to incorporate a "critical computing" approach into their lessons which aims to demystify computer algorithms and provoke discussion over their societal consequences. Shuman's ChatGPT lesson experiment was part of that approach.
Abby Hahn, another computer science teacher at the Bronx school, told the Times that she incorporated a "critical computing" approach into her lesson one day when she taught her students about racial bias in facial recognition systems and how it can lead to false arrests of Black men, a lesson that reportedly shocked her students.
But while discussion is the extent of AI education for some schools, other schools are taking it a step further. One professor at UPenn's Wharton School of Business is requiring students to use ChatGPT to help with coming up with class project ideas and improving their writing, adding an AI policy to his syllabus to make it official.
The student reactions to Shuman's AI-class experiment make clear that students want to be taught by humans and that AI won't replace teachers anytime soon. But as ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI become more popular, it may only be a matter of time before it becomes a core part of student learning, CEO of ChatGPT maker Sam Altman said in an interview.