ChatGPT: Quebec educators grapple with AI's potential impact on teaching

ChatGPT, the new AI capable of producing paragraphs of human-sounding prose in seconds, is causing a stir in Quebec’s classrooms, as educators grapple with what some consider a turning point in education.

ChatGPT, the new AI capable of producing paragraphs of human-sounding prose in seconds, is causing a stir in Quebec’s classrooms, as educators grapple with what some consider a turning point in education.

The program is accessible to all online, though high demand from internet users makes for long virtual ques. Once you get in, the site encourages you to ask the AI to describe a complex topic, suggest party ideas for a 10-year-old’s birthday, or drum up an HTTP request in Javascript.

But Quebec educators are nervous about other uses for the software – namely its potential to be used as a way for students to skirt their assignments.

In theory, a teacher could ask a student to write a five-paragraph reaction to Shakespeare’s first Sonnet, or Descartes’ motivation for the Meditations.

Dawson College philosophy teacher Robert Stephens posed the latter question to the AI during an interview with CTV. Moments later, ChatGPT returned a several lines, and could provide several more if asked.

“It has read bazillions of bits of texts written by humans, it has read whole books,” said Stephens. “It’s almost like a [version of] Wikipedia that you can interact with, and it will rewrite the article for you in a slightly different wording every time you ask it to.”

Stephens is part of the college’s AI initiative, educating staff on ChatGPT and its potential impact on teaching. He says many of his colleagues are only just becoming aware of the program, but that some have already shifted their syllabi to accommodate it.