"I submitted a report with ChatGPT in the winter semester." On January 31st, the posting on an anonymous online university community called “Everytime,” about a student who received an A+ grade for a task submitted using the interactive artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, was a hot topic. As cases of using ChatGPT for real-world tasks are known, Pusan National University (PNU) is also struggling to develop countermeasures against it.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot specializing in conversations, developed by Open AI, an artificial intelligence research institute, on November 30th of last year. Unlike existing chatbots, which only gave answers to questions, it is possible to perform tasks in various fields such as thesis writing and translation, songwriting and composition, and coding. ChatGPT surpassed 1,000,000 users per day within 5 days of its launch and has achieved 100,000,000 monthly active users (MAU) as of right now (February 1). MAU refers to the number of users who have used ChatGPT at least once in a month. 

In person, when the reporter used ChatGPT to perform a task, it was confirmed that the abilities of ChatGPT was not much different from that of humans. When asked on February 22nd to analyze the process of change in journalism based on statistics, ChatGPT quickly produced an organized answer. ChatGPT classified the process of change in journalism into 10 topics: digital transformation, social media, decreasing trust, revenue issues, more subscription models, more emphasis on video content, less local news, more diversity, and data journalism in less than 30 seconds, and was able to analyzed them based on statistics. This was not too different from the results of the task performed directly without the use of ChatGPT.

Amid continued possibility of exploitation of ChatGPT, some say it is useful. If people know how to use it and use it effectively for education, it can be utilized as a useful tool. Kwon Hyuk-Chul (Prof. of School of Computer Science and Engineering, PNU) said, "ChatGPT is not an object of fear, but a tool to use. If a professor gives a task to criticize the results of ChatGPT to their students, students can develop their critical thinking skills."

PNU is also trying to produce alternatives against ChatGPT. An official from the Office of Educational Affairs at PNU said, “We recognize problems such as ChatGPT ghostwriting during assignments and tests. Rather than preventing students from using AI technology, we will strengthen the ethics education on plagiarism and seek ways to use it properly." 

Recommendations for professors are also under discussion. He said, “It plans to run an education program at the Teaching and Learning Support Center for professors. If students use ChatGPT, we'll instruct students to specify that it is data derived from it.”

Reporter Im Hyeon-Gyu

Translated by Lim Chae-Kyung