Local 10 | By Amanda Batchelor and Christina Vazquez | January 11, 2023
New York City schools have recently banned access to ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence bot that has the ability to complete students’ work, and now South Florida school districts are looking into the issue.
According to a report in the Washington Post, the bot can do everything from writing essays, solving algebraic equations and even completing coding assignments.
“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Local 10 News reached out to the public school districts in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which both said they are aware of the controversy surrounding the bot.
“The District is looking into it. At this point, a decision has not yet been made,” a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools said in an email.
“The District is aware of this new system. No actions have been taken place at this time,” a spokeswoman for Broward County Public Schools said.
The bot has gotten so much attention in recent weeks that even Elon Musk commented on the matter.
“ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI,” he posted to Twitter last month.
ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI in November 2022 and its developers maintain that the bot is highly regulated by governments and industry groups around the world and guidelines are in place to ensure that it’s being used in “a responsible and safe manner.”
According to techcrunch.com, the bot has become so popular that actor Ryan Reynolds enlisted ChatGPT to write an ad for Mint Mobile, the mobile carrier he part-owns.
Microsoft will also reportedly incorporate the AI behind ChatGPT into its Office suite and Bing.
