“What we wanted to do was have that surprise element,” said Peter Cotton, “… reinforcing the message that, actually, this software is already very, very powerful.”Innovations in Education and Teaching International
They pasted ChatGPT’s responses directly into their manuscript. The only edits the professors made were adding subheads for the paper’s different sections and some references. Those changes spoke to the program’s limitations in producing text predictively, Debby Cotton said: ChatGPT was able to add references to a research paper when asked, but ended up generating convincing but fabricated citations using the names of commonly cited experts in a field.
before submitting their paper, to confirm that the journal was comfortable with publishing their unusual experiment. They and an editor at the journal both toldthat the paper wasn’t an actual example of academic dishonesty – the authors flagged their use of ChatGPT after the paper’s conclusion and, in a postscript section titled “Discussion,” described how they generated the paper.Article content
“In a year’s time, I suspect they’re going to be far more sophisticated,” Peter Cotton said. “… By that stage, universities will just about be deciding that they’ve rubber-stamped the first changes to regulations, which will already be even more out of date than our paper.”Article content