Wednesday 8th March, 12.00 – 13.00
Mike Sharples
New generative AI systems such as ChatGPT are powerful general-purpose language devices. They can hold conversations, write plausible student essays, summarise scientific texts, produce lesson plans, and draft academic papers. But they have a serious flaw – they are language models not knowledge bases; they output “continuations” not facts. As such, they need to be approached with great care. In this talk I show examples of their use and misuse, discuss the implications for student assessment and plagiarism, suggest new opportunities for creative writing and argumentation with AI, and end with some implications for educational development and policy making.
Mike Sharples is Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University and is the co-author of the book which is a great introduction to this form of software and its development https://www.routledge.com/Story-Machines-How-Computers-Have-Become-Creative-Writers/Sharples-Perez/p/book/9780367751975
A member of the International Consortium for Educational Development