“Everybody is Cheating,” Says a Wharton Professor; He Has Adopted an AI Policy

IBL News | New York

Addressing concerns that ChatGPT could facilitate cheating, Ethan Mollick, an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an educator experienced with the usage of ChatGPT, asked his own students to be honest.

“Everybody is cheating, it’s happening,” he said in an interview at NPR.

Some school districts have banned access to the bot, and not without reason.

The artificial intelligence tool from the company OpenAI can compose poetry, can write computer code, and even started to pass exams at top schools. [See IBL News’ extensive coverage.]

The response of Professor Mollick – who teaches entrepreneurship and innovation – has required the use of ChatGPT. He has even formally adopted an AI policy that requires students to acknowledge to use the tool.

Recently, he ran a session where students were asked to come up with ideas for their class project, warning that the tool may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information.

“Almost everyone had ChatGPT running. The ideas so far are great, partially as a result of that set of interactions.”

“We taught people how to do math in a world with calculators,” he said. “Now the challenge is for educators to teach students how the world has changed again, and how they can adapt to that.”

“I don’t think human nature changes as a result of ChatGPT. I think capability did.”

• Wired: ChatGPT Is Coming for Classrooms. Don’t Panic