Is It Ethical to Use ChatGPT in Academic Writing?
Introduction
Since the launch of ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) in late November of 2022, it has attracted over 200 million registered users. Designed by OpenAI, a start-up company in San Francisco, ChatGPT is a free online Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer program, that could write human-sounding, response the questions people raise, and write song, poem, essay or even a computer program as requested. It is a machine learning model contains all the writing online database till 2021. ChatGPT had owned one million users within five days since it launched prototype on November 30, 2022. Compared to other popular online applications, Facebook used around ten months to get its first one million users, and Netflix had used three and half years to get its first one million customers (Jolly, 2023).
Some people say ChatGPT is a revolutionary invention and will significantly change people’s mind because it not only could be used as a search engine but also could realize the man-machine dialog, tailed content creation, essay writing, and many other functions. However, in the academic field, some educators raise various concerns and are afraid of using ChatGPT in academic writing would cause ethical quandary, such as plagiarism, or contract cheating as well as misconduct.
Question – Is It Ethical to Use ChatGPT in Academic Writing?
Professionals in academic fields show great enthusiasm to discuss and argue the positive and negative influence by using ChatGPT in academic areas. This paper only concentrates on the ethical issue of using ChatGPT in the academic writing.
Educators with positive attitude indicate that with this AI-assisted writing tool, people could significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency in writing. It also helps the students to express their ideas and well communicate when they struggle in language skills or English is not their first language such as immigrates or international students. Another powerful function for ChatGDP is data analysis, it could assist students to identify the pattern and trends in massive data. Some faculty says it could help students to improve their writing skills because ChatGPT can generate writing summary from students’ research work (Pittalwala, 2023).
Meantime, some professionals disapprove the use of ChatGPT in academic writing and raise ethical concerns. They concern about the negative impact on improvement of students’ writing skills and creativity; originality - preventing students from generating their original ideas and expressing their own opinions. They also concern about intellectual property issue, and are afraid that some students just use this AI-tool to copy and paste without proper reference and checking accuracy. Fairness and accessibility are other concerns, due not all students could have the access or have the skill of using this AI tool (Moosmosis et al., 2022).
This powerful AI-assist tool makes both students and faculties in ethical quandary. However, to make a rational decision is not an easy task especially in complicated situation. Moral reasoning occurs when deciding between right or wrong courses of action in a complex and uncertain situation - otherwise known as ethical dilemmas. We need to rely on rational thinking systems to lead us to make ethical decisions. Fortunately, scholars provide us some best models, such as the Rest model, the five principles, and 12 questions (Glanz, 2009). Below, we will try to analyze the situation and make rational decisions using the Rest model.
Theory Analysis and Arguments
The Rest model is James Rest practice decision – making model consisted of four components based on “moral reasoning and ethics of care” (Glanz, 2009). Component one is moral sensitivity – to understand how the different perspectives could affect all stake holders. In this case, it is to consider how the use of ChatGPT in academic writing would impact on the major stakeholders – students and teachers, as well as the community and schools. Even without the AI tools, some students still cheat because they are unable to realize the value of the writing, they see it as a piece of product required by the teachers, and they need to complete it only for getting a good grade. For the teachers, how to evaluate the learning result and allow students to write what they are really interested in is a longstanding issue. For schools, they require students to ethically comply with the principles of academic integrity, to prevent cheating or misconduct. The greater community would want justice and fairness.
Component two is moral judgement, to define what should be done. Knowledge, guidelines and codes of conduct and ethics could help to form decisions by knowing what are the right things. In this case, we need to rely on professional code of ethics and the ultimate goal of education. Shapiro and Stefkovich (2022) argue that the professional code of ethics is oriented on the three basic paradigms. 1. Ethics of justice, emphasizing on law and freedom; 2. The ethics of critique, against social inequities such as class, gender, race; 3. The ethics of care, focuses on relationship and connections, and encourage interpersonal collaborations. The ethical code of the profession based on the justice, critique and care, requires schools and teachers to focus on students’ academic achievements and wellbeing. The ultimate goal of education is to serve the best interest of students and the common good.
Component three is moral motivation, is to decide what are the right thing to do. As human beings, in our nature, we all want to do the right things. We need to make it a priority amongst competing and uncomfortable alternatives, and maintain the consistency and resiliency facing external pressure. In this case, once we understand what is the best interest of students, we need to decide what are the best actions to help students to achieve their academic goal. It might cause us more troubles, extra efforts, or even overthrow our traditional concept about education, we have to make the change.
Component four is moral action, it is about implementation and practice the moral plan. The use of ChatGPT has raised some moral panic in the education field. How should the academia deal with the situation? The alternatives include doing nothing and allow it to be used freely; or recognizing the technology and putting constraints on its use; or banning it completely. The New York City and Seattle school system have banned the students and teachers to access ChatGPT in schools’ computers; many colleges also consider to take the similar actions. However, some faculties and schools show their positive attitude and support to this new technology. The statement of IBO - International Baccalaureate Organization, says it will not ban students from using the chatbot in their assignments or academic papers as long as they credit it, because they believe it is not an efficient way to ban any innovative technology such as AI-tools (Iborganization). Some educators have tried to use ChatGPT to help them to build up their curriculum or slides, they believe that this tool could help students as well as instructors to explore the possibility of massive information online.
Agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, people are fascinated by this new technology. According to the survey of 1000 college students by an online magazine in the U.S., about one in three have used ChatGPT for academic writings (Jolly, 2023). We are unable or impossible to resist the pace of scientific and technological progress, today it is ChatGPT, tomorrow there would be more new inventions, banning or neglection are not rational and practical choices.
To answer the question of this paper: if the use of ChatGPT ethical in academic writing? It is not about if schools or teachers should give the authorization to students. It is about how should we guide students to use those new technologies in a good way, an ethical way, as learning aids to benefit student’s academic improvement, to serve students’ best interest and common good.
Solutions (Moral Plan)
After discussing the first three components of the Rest model – moral sensitivity (awareness), moral judgement (reasoning) and moral motivation (intention), the last part is to implement the moral plan based on the profession code of ethics as educators, and fully aware of the foundation of professional code - the three basic paradigms: justice, critique and care.
In order to prevent the plagiarizing and misconduct behavior in using ChatGPT in academic writing, schools and teachers need to inform students that any use of AI-tools should be in line with the policy of academic integrity. The software needs to be credited in the text and appropriately referenced in the bibliography (Iborganization). Digital literacy needs be included in the curriculum for the understanding of AI-tools. Although the ChatGPT generated content "sounds" authoritative, in fact it is a collection of online information. Students need to reconfirm the resources and evaluate it before using in any research work and use it as an extension of research tool. In addition, not all students have the access or ability to use this new technology, it would make partial students in the disadvantaged position. Schools need to provide enough computers in the school library or lend second-hand laptops to students in need, and arrange IT people to assist and provide the user guide to ensure students have the access to the hardware and be able to handle the software.
Professors also need to convince students that the meaning of writing is a form of thinking. They need to empower students to take the ownership of each step in their learning process; allow students to write about topics that they are genuinely interested in and the students’ voice need to be valued as well. Furthermore, schools and professors need to create an atmosphere that students are willing to engage in learning instead of only aiming to get a degree, and make the value of education apparent to the students. In summary, the instructors need to discover the best way to use AI-tools to students’ benefit and arm students with the power to use it for good (2022).
There also need some changes from the instructing side. Instructors could re-evaluate their teaching mission, to adapt to this new challenge and design assessments that can bypass the use of AI tools. Meantime, they can develop their curriculum to involve more critical thinking and incorporate the use of AI tools into the syllabus, especially to develop guidelines or best practices for the use of AI tools in essay writing.
OpenAI, the company invented ChatGPT, told the public that they are working on a tool to help identify text generated by this AI-tool. It's should be similar to "an algorithmic 'watermark,' or sort of invisible flag embedded into ChatGPT's writing that can identify its source"(Pittalwala, 2023). This tool will also help teachers to make assessment on students’ assignments and writings.
Conclusion
The comments that ChatGDP generated for a quantum physics, seems also appropriate to describe itself: it “changes the way we see the world and leads to new technologies, but also unlocks a door to powers beyond human comprehension, that can be used for good or evil. It forever changes the future of humanity" (Jolly, 2023).
Once we admit that our student will interact with AI systems anyway, then as educators, it is our obligation to teach them the usefulness and limitations of the technology, and to ensure that they understand how to be able to write by themselves without solely depending on the AI-tool to complete a good assignment or essay. With the moral reasoning tool of the Rest model, we could identify the stakeholders – students, teachers and schools and aware their perspectives; make judgement according to the professional code of ethics as educators to find out the right things to do among all alternatives, then take moral actions.
The question is not if the use of ChatGPT in academic writing is ethical or not, the essential part is how should we - schools and teachers help and direct students to use it ethically, in a way to help students and teachers to enhance their learning and teaching experiences, to achieve the final goal of improving students’ academic performance and serving the best interest of students. It needs to be in line with schools’ policy of academic integrity and adhere to the principle of fairness and justice, as well as the professional code of ethics.
From web1.0 to future web5.0, the only choice for humans is to adopt to new technologies. It does not say the technology will take in charge. Instead, our task is how we could utilize those new tools to serve for humans, to help us in a good way in our daily life, as well as in academic field and life-long learning.
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