Young Gen Zers are using OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT for schoolwork, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. But it’s unclear whether they are fully aware of the technology’s pitfalls.
In a follow-up to a 2023 poll on ChatGPT usage among youth, Pew surveyed approximately 1,400 U.S.-based youth ages 13 to 17 for homework and other school-related tasks. I asked if they had ever used ChatGPT for an assignment. 26% answered yes, double the number two years ago.
Just over half (54%) of the teens surveyed said they thought it was acceptable to use ChatGPT to research new topics. 29% said AI tools were acceptable for math problems, and 18% said using ChatGPT to write an essay was acceptable.
This result is probably alarming considering that ChatGPT can fail.
ChatGPT is not very good at math. Nor is it the most reliable source of factual information. A recent study investigating whether mainstream AI could pass a PhD-level history test found that GPT-4o, the default AI model that powers ChatGPT, answered questions slightly more accurately than a human would guess at random. I realized that I can only answer .
In the same study, ChatGPT was found to be weakest in areas such as social mobility and sub-Saharan Africa geopolitics. These areas may be related to the demographics of teens who report using it most often in school. According to a Pew poll, black and Hispanic teens are more likely than white teens to report using ChatGPT for school-related tasks.
Unsurprisingly, research on the educational impact of ChatGPT is mixed. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students with access to ChatGPT performed worse on a math test than those without access. In another study, researchers found that German students using ChatGPT were able to find research materials more easily, but were less adept at using those materials than students who did not use ChatGPT. We have observed that there is a tendency that it cannot be synthesized.
In another Pew poll last year, a quarter of K-12 public teachers said using AI tools like ChatGPT in education would do more harm than good. Meanwhile, a study by the Rand Corporation and the Center for Reinventing Public Education found that only 18% of K-12 educators are using AI in the classroom.
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