Schools have battled with students cheating for ages, but recently the door has opened for more cheating with the use of artificial intelligence. 

     The infamous program in question is ChatGPT, a chat bot that can write essays, solve math problems and do a plethora of school work. The website was created by OpenAI, a platform for artificial intelligence research that was co-founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. 

     With ChatGPT’s emerging popularity, school districts and teachers across the country have become increasingly worried about how it can be used to cheat on assignments. The program has been blocked by a number of school districts, including SRVUSD, but its easy accessibility makes it difficult to prevent, especially when students use it from home. 

     “Unlike convincing a friend to write your essay because they took the class before or paying somebody online to write the essay for you, this is free and instantaneous,” said South Carolina college professor Darren Hick in an interview with the New York Post. 

     The issue is that there is not much of an incentive for students to do their own work anymore. This problem extends to Monte Vista and its teachers. English teachers specifically have the most problems with the program writing essays for students.

     “This is such a new thing that our department is really not sure of how we’re going to tackle the issue,” said Monte Vista English teacher Jessica Laurence.  “Our first thought is that yeah it would be plagiarism.”

     Even though ChatGPT is currently seen as a program that is used for cheating, that image could be changed. If it was used to make curriculums instead and form sample pieces of work, it would be more accepted in schools.

     “On the end of curriculum grading and something like a tool for teachers I think it could be somewhat beneficial alleviating some of that pressure to continuously recreate the wheel,” Laurence said. “For students, if they were unsure of what an assignment or a paragraph or something needed to look like they could use ChatGPT as a tool.”

     The issue is difficult to approach and many believe it will remain so if ChatGPT continues to be so undetectable. ChatGPT and other similar applications may have the ability to revolutionize education, but in what way is yet to be seen.