‘He’s using it for exams!’ a guy with black hair jokes. He points at one of the three other maths students chatting by the coffee machine on the first floor of the Bernoulliborg. ‘Yeah, I have ChatGPT glasses’, smiles his friend. 

They are not the first group of students to try and avoid the question of whether they use AI for their studies. Finally, one of them steps in: ‘I guess in our field, it’s not as good for generating answers, but it’s a nice way to check if what you’ve done is correct’, he says, before quickly heading out to the next lecture with the others.

ChatGPT. Everybody knows what it is, but it is also clearly a sensitive topic. Ask around among friends and there’s hardly anyone that doesn’t use it, but students hesitate to admit it on record. Some because they’re not clear on what the university’s guidelines are, others because they fear it might damage their reputation. 

No guidelines

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, and it wasn’t long before students started using it and the other generative AI programs that soon followed. A UKrant poll held among 330 UG students in February 2023 showed 60 percent of them had started using ChatGPT already. ‘I remember seeing everybody use it in the UG library’, says Maria *), then a journalism student. ‘It was on everybody’s screens.’

It’s not a matter of whether you use it, but how you use it

She, too, tried out the tool. She was working on a final assignment and needed help finding academic sources. But when she handed in her paper, she was flagged. ‘Non-credible sources’, her teacher concluded. She had to retake the course and write an entirely new essay.

Harsh, she says, looking back. ‘I checked the guidelines, and there weren’t any published before I submitted the assignment on 20 March.’ Still, she admits she was wrong and takes the blame for not double-checking her sources. 

Summarising and brainstorming

Back then, many teachers were adamant to ban the use of ChatGPT or other generative AI tools as much as possible. Two years later, a lot has changed. AI has become an integral part of students’ lives and the academic reality, and the university has issued official guidelines. The use of AI to brainstorm, summarise texts, correct language, and translate is allowed now.

‘It’s not a matter of whether you use it, but how you use it’, says international relations student Guilherme Rodrigues. ‘I just use ChatGPT to summarise points, to facilitate the explanation of some concepts. But in terms of writing, I don’t take anything from ChatGPT.’

Physics master student Theo *) has no problem using AI for suggesting improvements or automating tasks that are repetitive. ‘It’s okay to use it’, he says. ‘It’s a tool, so you should use it to understand things, and not let it use you.’

Misuse

Using ChatGPT as an assistant is just common sense, students feel. However, there is misuse too. ‘Where I see it as a problem is when instead of asking for examples or assistance, you just take the whole thing and slap it into your assignment without any interpretation’, says Theo. 

I have friends who passed an exam with an AI paper 

Guilherme agrees. ‘I have friends who passed an exam with a paper that was completely done by AI.’ 

Every student seems to know someone who got away with passing off ChatGPT’s work as their own. ‘My friend uses it for everything’, says international relations student Aimé *). Even when she knows the answer to a question, she still uses ChatGPT to answer it for her. ‘I think she normally gets away with it because she just rewrites the assignments in her own words.’

Grey area

That is not okay, these students say. But there is a big grey area between what is acceptable and what is clearly not. At what point does the use of ChatGPT cross a line? 

Aimé admits she uses the tool to write small assignments for her economy class. ‘Sometimes I just don’t feel like doing it. It’s not for a grade and they don’t really check it, so I use ChatGPT.’

To student Ana, it oversteps the limit when there’s absolutely no critical thinking on the students’ end. ‘I used ChatGPT once to help me with ideas to answer part of a question. Then, I went on the discussion forum online and I saw a girl had copy-pasted the exact same answer ChatGPT had given me. It’s very risky.’

That’s not to say she doesn’t use AI herself. ‘I use it all the time to get ideas on how to structure, or to summarise a text I did not have time to read before a class’, she says. ‘But I have it in the back of my mind that I can’t always trust it.’

Steering clear

For some students, that last point is a reason to steer clear from AI altogether. ‘The fact that it produces content and I don’t know where it’s coming from is what keeps me from using it’, says literary student Wouke. ‘I’d rather just google things on my own.’  

Plus, she says, she’s ‘terrified’ that she’ll be flagged by the AI checker the university uses. She already failed one essay because the professor was suspicious she had used ChatGPT, which she hadn’t. ‘I was so offended and upset.’ 

It produces content and I don’t know where it’s coming from

Journalism student Daria Danila also doesn’t use AI, but for a different reason. ‘I think it can interfere with my creative process’, she explains. If ChatGPT becomes a quick source of ideas, it will hinder your ability to come up with things on your own, she believes. ‘People can get too dependent on it for creativity.’

International relations student Vicente Morgado agrees. ‘I need to develop my critical thinking skills without the help of a third party, so I avoid using it’, he says. ‘I think that sometimes human laziness or the desire to gain an advantage has taken us to another path.’ And that has happened again now with artificial intelligence, he suspects. ‘It’s not a path of support, but a path to dependence.’

Clarity

He wonders what things with AI will be like in five years. ‘I feel like they will be different. Now, the rules are still fresh and there’s a huge grey area.’ It would be good, he thinks, if at the beginning of a course, students are told how the university feels about AI and what they can and can’t do with it. ‘That should clear things up.’

Guilherme sees it the same way. ‘I think that this current lack of clarity from the university about the guidelines comes from a lack of knowledge about AI.’ 

One thing is for certain, says Aimé: GenAI is only going to become a bigger part of students’ lives. ‘It is evolving so much. I think that it’s very important for us to learn how to use it.’ 

*) Maria, Theo and Aimé are pseudonyms. The editorial team knows their real names.

In two weeks, UKrant will cover how lecturers are dealing with the use of ChatGPT in education.

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