ChatGPT - Is it Cheating?

Classroom

Without any doubt a child getting another child to complete their assignment is cheating. But two children working together or a parent aiding in completing the assignment is not, so long as they adhere to just helping and do not take over and complete the assignment for them.

I form the belief that if the answer is just handed to you with little to no work, like what the AI does in completing assignments for those in school, then it’s cheating.

But is it cheating if a tool that gives you the answer, like say, a calculator?

Calculator

A calculator is a tool that aids in calculations. But while the use of the tool to aid in solving problems in real life, university and high school is permitted it is not in primary school (at least in the lower grades). This is due to the fact that they already know how to add, minus, multiply, divide without a calculator. The calculator is merely a tool used to aid in solving more complex math problems, while it does give us the answers, fundamentally we understand the why/how of how it got that answer due to the foundation of math that we learnt as a child. The calculator was not merely handed to us, we had to learn the basics first.

In the working world it is not cheating to have someone complete your work for you so long as you don’t take undue credit for work that is not yours. In fact, this is the norm. We see this all the time in the workplace when a CEO, supervisor or manager have tasks that are necessary to the running of the business that they get the staff below them, or staff with more expertise in this area to complete the tasks for them. Is that not what delegation is?

So, ChatGPT is it cheating?

In my opinion in terms of ‘cheating’ it is not an issue in the workplace (there are a whole other plethora of issues with using AI in the workplace, but we are not discussing that now) but is a significant item of contention in the academic sense.

In terms of schooling, I’d say it depends on if what the AI is providing is ‘help’ or ‘completing’ the assignment on their behalf and the restrictions listed on the assignment or exam, as we all know there are open and closed book exams (for example, it is not cheating to bring your textbook and notes with you in an open book exam but it would be in a closed book exam), exams you can bring a calculator to and ones you cannot, as to whether it is cheating or not. If the assignment or exam doesn't specify that ChatGPT is allowed, I think it's safe to assume that using it would be cheating considering how new ChatGPT actually is.

My fear is that we will stagnate in our creativity, in science, in asking why. This is what propels our society forwards, it’s what lead to the creation of the AI. But if all this knowledge is just handed to us, if it starts creating art, music and essays better than our own with little to no work on our end than, unless the AI can think up completely new content, will we not just stop creating new work, stop questioning why something works and stop brainstorming a way to make it better just because the AI can hand us an easy answer?

Sorry folks no input from ChatGPT in this post but the whole concept of is ChatGPT cheating is a big discussion point that needs to be thought through throughly.