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ChatGPT is incredible – and terrifying.

21-NOV-2022 | How many jobs will this kill? Will it disrupt our education system?

Essay writing for students is one of the most obvious examples of where ChatGPT could become a problem. Many students may now say what is the point of learning to write essays at school when artificial intelligence (AI) can do that for us? And ChatGPT will only get exponentially better in the near future.

The point is that AI cannot be and should not be stopped. Instead, we should be aware of the technological advancements that are sweeping our world and develop safeguards to adopt them responsibly. There is already the software to help teachers identify whether their students are plagiarizing their essays from ChatGPT. Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the internet itself would ruin education, but they did not.

Software has revolutionized businesses in myriad ways in the past 35 years, and with machine learning applications such as ChatGPT, this trend is set to continue…and education and businesses will continue to reap the benefits. When it comes to education, for example, while ChatGPT won’t be able to replace a teacher in a classroom, it can certainly help them to prepare. Education professionals spend nearly 50 percent of their working hours on things like lesson planning – a process that ChatGPT can perform in seconds.

ChatGPT will surely threaten some jobs. But, as ever in business, when new technology arrives to replace an existing job, workers will find new roles. For instance, content creators can pivot to become content editors instead.

The next task for higher education should be to prepare graduates to make the most effective use of the new tools and to emphasize active and experiential learning that show students how to take advantage of these new technologies.

Dejan Trpkovic
Managing Director, PRODIREKT
Founder of Verbalists Education & Language Network