How ChatGPT and similar AI will disrupt education

Teachers are concerned about cheating and inaccurate information

a side profile of a young man sitting in a classroom taking notes at a desk. He is looking at another young man next to him, who is also writing. Overlaid over the second student are animations suggesting computing, algorithms and artificial intelligence

Students are turning to ChatGPT for homework help. Educators have mixed feeling about the tool and other generative AI.

Glenn Harvey

“We need to talk,” Brett Vogelsinger said. A student had just asked for feedback on an essay. One paragraph stood out. Vogelsinger, a ninth grade English teacher in Doylestown, Pa., realized that the student hadn’t written the piece himself. He had used ChatGPT.

The artificial intelligence tool, made available for free late last year by the company OpenAI, can reply to simple prompts and generate essays and stories.