BENGALURU: In wake of some private universities banning Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) over reports of its alleged misuse by students, Higher Education and IT/BT Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan said the government needs more time to assess the role of ChatGPT in higher educational institutions.
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by OpenAI, an American AI research lab. While the platform, launched in November 2022, is meant to mimic human conversation through text, controversy has erupted over its use as there have been reports of students taking advantage of the bot to auto-generate essays and assignments for school and college.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Ashwath Narayan said, “ChatGPT is a relatively new concept. We need time to consider the issues surrounding it and how to deal with them.”
Pradeep P, Commissioner, Department of Collegiate and Technical Education, said, “So far, there are no plans to implement a policy on ChatGPT. While the department has heard of the platform, there is no discussion taking place regarding it as of now,” he told The New Indian Express.
IIIT panel to study ChatGPT
Following reports of ChatGPT being used by students to pass examinations in American universities, some private Bengaluru universities have implemented policies to ban or reduce its use in their institutions. Several instances of its use by college students have been reported.
Private institutions like RV University and the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) have formulated their own ways of addressing the problem. IIIT formulated a four-person committee to analyse ChatGPT and its impact on education.
Speaking to TNIE, IIIT Director Dr Debabrata Das said that the committee would undertake deep tech studies on ChatGPT and understand how effective its use in assignments is. “The committee will study its effectiveness in assignments, especially in post-graduate courses and courses related to computer science and engineering,” he said.
SURPRISE CHECKS
RV University issued a notice to its students, banning the use of ChatGPT. According to the university, the usage of the platform is banned and surprise checks would be carried out to ensure that students were not using it