While schools and universities across the country work on ways to discourage students from using artificial intelligence to complete assignments, a Tennessee college is in hot water for using the technology to compose a sensitive email to students.
Vanderbilt University used the ChatGPT system to write an email to the student body in response to the Feb. 13 shooting at Michigan State that left three students dead and five others injured, CNN reported.
ChatGPT allows users to ask the system a question on any topic and receive a paragraph about that topic, USA Today reported.
The email from the Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, read in part: “The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments,” according to the student-run newspaper, the Vanderbilt Hustler.
The newspaper said the email included a notation at the bottom, “Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023″ indicating that it was written by artificial intelligence.
There was also only one recent shooting in Michigan, not multiple as the email stated, CNN reported.
You can read the email here.
The Associate Dean for Equity Diversity and Inclusion, Nicole Joseph, sent an email to the university saying that using ChatGPT to compose the first email was “poor judgment,” the school’s newspaper reported.
The school is conducting a review of the situation and Joseph, and an assistant dean who also signed the AI-generated email have stepped back from their duties, CNN reported.
Educators have said ChatGPT can be used to cheat, but USA Today reported that the output can have issues such as factual errors and can be manipulated.
Some universities are changing how they teach in response to the potential use of artificial intelligence, opting for oral exams, group projects and assignments that are written instead of typed, The New York Times reported. Schools have also blocked the webpage on their systems.
ChatGPT isn’t the only AI-driven application, Google created LaMDA to compete with it and Microsoft is considering investing in OpenAI, the site that launched ChatGPT. There are also several start-ups that are working on similar tools, the Times reported.