...
The service reached 100 million users within 2 months of launch. Media coverage generated both excitement and panic with examples of outputs successfully passing professional exams, writing passable job applications and producing work which could pass many assessments in education. Academia has been ‘stunned by ChatGPT’s essay writing skills and usability’ (Herne 2022), but some in the sector have approached the issue from a more critical, nuanced and welcoming perspective urging us to ‘get off the fear carousel’ (Mihal 2023) and some are just plain ‘AIngry' and frustrated that we are being distracted by the shiny new toy (Lancos 20022022).
Ulster has established an AI in Learning & Teaching working group to consider guidance, and policy changes, in response to the increased sector discussions on the topic. This article summarises some of the discussion at the initial meetings.
...
The tools have evolved over several years, from within research laboratories and indeed many of our academic teams, at Ulster, are actively involved in AI research and teaching. In the research world there are some that dispute whether an LLM is really Artificial Intelligence and some who are navigating the debate from a centrist perspective (Pallaghy 20022022). Despite different philosophical positions, the simplified interface and resulting reasoned responses provided by ChatGPT seemed like a huge leap in our expectations of these tools. This has resulted in much greater visibility of the opportunities and challenges of these technologies across subject disciplines including creative disciplines where AI can produce images, and video, from natural language prompts.
...