Is it ethical to submit an essay at school that is written by a generative AI system like ChatGPT, if the system is cited as a source?
To comment on this dilemma, leave a response. For anonymity, omit your email address and website, and use a screen name.
Ethical Decisions 
Despite the hype, ChatGPT is not magic. It is yet another chatbot, as the name suggests. Chatbots have been around at least since ELIZA was introduced in 1966, and they all work on the same basic principle. They build statistical models to predict which phrases are likely to occur with certain other phrases in text or speech. ChatGPT is larger in scale than its predecessors, because it is based on a vast dataset and billions of model parameters, but the principle is the same. So, if I allow ChatGPT to speak for me, I am essentially parroting what others have said.
The trouble with this is that other people often say things that are false or misleading. Worse, simply parroting what they say reduces my human brain to a bird brain. This leads to the first of several ethical problems.
Ethical Problem 1
The very act of writing an essay, for a school assignment or any other purpose, implies a promise that I have made a good faith effort to say something that is true and reasonable. Relying on ChatGPT, even if I cite it as a source, is not a good faith effort. Everyone knows that ChatGPT regularly fabricates phony “facts,” and there is certainly no assurance that verbiage extracted from online material makes a reasonable case for anything. So, writing an essay based on ChatGPT breaks a promise, which is unethical because promise breaking is not generalizable.
I am told that chatbots will quickly evolve so as to regurgitate only documented facts and cite the relevant sources. This helps, but the bots will still rely on crowdsourced verbiage to connect these facts into a narrative. Essayists owe it to their readers to do their own thinking and assume the responsibility of assembling a reasonable case for their thesis.
On the other hand, suppose I use ChatGPT merely as an aid to expressing my ideas in coherent English (if, for example, English is not my mother tongue). I carefully edit the text to express my intended meaning, and I check any fact claims against references I cite. Then I have made a good faith effort to be correct and reasonable, and Ethical Problem 1 is avoided.
For the record, I never use ChatGPT or any other chatbot to write anything.
Ethical Problem 2
Submitting an essay based on ChatGPT (even if ChatGPT is cited) could mislead a course instructor as to the student’s personal input. This is deception, which is unethical because it is not generalizable. If the instructor has a policy that permits chatbot-generated submissions, then fine. But it is important to be aware of the policy. My impression is that instructors are quickly adapting to ChatGPT.
Ethical Problem 3
The purpose of essay writing in school is to develop one’s capacity to think logically and write clearly. I don’t need to belabor the dangers of muddled thinking and bad writing in our world of divisive social media and puerile trolling. A student who neglects developing these skills deprives the world of one rational voice, which is disutilitarian and therefore unethical.
Appropriate use of chatbots could be beneficial in specific contexts, and some instructors are beginning to teach the relevant skills. Developing these skills is of course utilitarian, provided it is done without neglecting the basic cognitive abilities that essay writing inculcates.
LikeLike