182: Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT as an AI Tool in Grad School

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring podcast. This is your host, Dra. Yvette, academic coach, author, speaker. Today I have an episode on the pros and cons of using ChatGPT as an AI tool in grad school.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now, I have to admit, I'm a little bit nervous talking about this episode, because it is a bit of a controversial topic in higher ed. Before I dive in, I want to just share a disclaimer and say that anything I share today is not to be used as professional advice. You should decide the implications of how you will use AI technology in your life. So don't come at me, because you listened to this episode.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

But I am someone who is curious. And I am someone who is always open to learning new tools and strategies to help simplify my life, to help make things more efficient, and to give me more of my time back. One thing that I've been using- really since the new year, I started messing around with ChatGPT. I have found it to be interesting and useful in some ways and problematic in other ways. So based off my limited understanding and usage of this tool, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts which are, again, like I said, the pros and cons of ChatGPT as a tool.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

If you are listening to this and you're thinking, what is ChatGPT? Maybe you've been under a rock and haven't really been made aware about this technology. I'll share a little bit more about what it is. It is considered a chat box tool. It's a form of artificial intelligence that was launched late 2022. It's been all the buzz since it was launched in November 2022. I especially feel like I started to hear a lot about it in December 2022 and in January 2023. I started hearing about it in December. Then in January, I thought -okay, too many people are talking about this. I need to get in on it and find out what is going on.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

What's interesting about ChatGPT is that it is like what it sounds like. It's a chat box. When you log on to the website, it's an open AI website. All you see is a chat box and you ask it questions. Depending on the level of specificity and the types of prompts that you ask it, it will generate some very detailed responses. Some folks are arguing that it could potentially replace a Google because of the level of detail in the responses that it provides. I have read so many articles from different higher ed venues, popular magazines, newspaper sites, and there's a lot of trepidation.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

There's a lot of fear. There's anxiety. A lot of professors are freaking out thinking that this is just going to be a nightmare for folks that work on plagiarism cases and academic dishonesty cases. And also the fear that students will be less likely to want to learn, they're gonna become over reliant on these technologies and they're no longer gonna learn how to how to write effectively. There's a lot of like- how do we ensure that students are producing their own writing and their own ideas and not relying on this tool to do all of the work for them? I've even read articles where they've used the tool to participate in classes and it has passed certain- I don't know if it was a law course or medical course, but it's passed classes on its own just by generating- again, adding prompts to it to generate information.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So it's a lot. I get why there's serious concern about it. But on the other side of things, I also get why there can be excitement and why there could be so much potential with it in terms of using it as a tool. So I wanted to provide my understanding of the tool and of the pros and cons, and then share some examples of how I've recently been using it, and what my overall thoughts about it are. We'll start with the cons, because I've already started sharing some of them just by talking about what I've been reading on the threads and the articles and even having conversations with other folks in higher ed spaces.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Let's start out with the first thing, which is that the information that it can feed to you, that it can provide to you can be biased. It's been shown to provide sexist information, racist information. Why? Because it's pulling information from the internet and any information you get from the internet cannot be 100% trusted. That's why we have things like peer reviewed publications to ensure, to double check, to make sure we are not generating information that is biased- or at least to minimize it. So nformation you get from it can be biased.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing that's not so great is that the information is outdated. The last thing I read, I think it said that the version that they have out right now has data from 2021. So if you're asking for any information after that, you're not gonna get it. It's outdated. Sometimes it can also produce information that's completely nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense. You ask it a question, and it's like it's in another planet and it's not answering it at all- or it's answering in a way that makes no sense.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The next con- and this is what I keep hearing over and over and over again, this is a big concern- is that it increases the chances that students will rely too heavily on it, that it'll decrease their motivation to learn independently. And even worse, that they will use it to plagiarize- and the form of plagiarism cannot be easily detected. I know that folks have created and are working on perfecting, or updating, or improving websites that can try to detect if something has been generated by AI. But right now, it's so complicated out there y'all that folks are writing their own papers, their own ideas, generating their own writing, putting it in the software that tries to detect if it's AI created or not. And it's saying that 80% of it or more it has been generated by AI when that person knows that they themselves wrote it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So again, that's a little tricky. That's a little complicated. That is concerning when it comes to plagiarism cases. And I will tell you this. Plagiarism cases are probably going to go up. I am almost 100% sure that the plagiarism cases are gonna go up. Why? Not because it means that more people are going to plagiarize, but because more folks are going to be on the lookout for it. This happened during the pandemic. During the pandemic, because of the switch to remote courses, there was a fear, more of a higher concern, that students would be plagiarizing during that time. When more folks are on the lookout, of course the cases are going to increase than when folks are not really on the lookout, not really checking, not using software that detects plagiarism. It just makes sense.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

If more people are aware that there's access to this technology called ChatGPT, students can ask it to write essays for them- now I'm going to buckle down, or double down, or really focus on double, triple checking every assignment to see if it's been plagiarized. Again, that's a problem. It's going to be a big headache for institutions of higher ed and for the folks that work on cases that have to do with academic honesty and dishonesty.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another con has to do with how we don't really know what this technology is going to do with our information. So proceed with caution. Don't provide any sensitive information. Don't provide information that you wouldn't want to be out there on the interwebs. That's the part that's scary. It's just like- there was that one app that a lot of folks- also around that time over the New Yea- a bunch of people were using this app. I don't even know what it's called because I myself didn't use it. But they were putting in their pictures, and then this AI app was generating artwork based off their headshots. And there was this big kind of ethical dilemma about how this AI technology is robbing from artists. It's pulling techniques from different artists, and then using it to generate new art- and not granting these artists credit for pulling from there art, from their techniques.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So it's been a big case of ethics, of how do you move forward in a world where there is technology that could potentially assist you in your work. But then at the same time, you're not 100% sure of the ways that it is generating this material for you. In my case, I opted not to use that app, because I did not feel comfortable with having my face out there. I don't know what it's going to do with my pictures. And I also didn't feel comfortable knowing that it was actually robbing artwork or artistic techniques- again, from artists out there who have found some works that have been AI generated that look very, very similar to their own.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

That's a lot of cons. And I understand if you're afraid, if you don't feel comfortable, if you don't even want to try it. But I would encourage you to at least test it out, at least see what's going on. Mess with it in whatever way feels safe with you so that the fear can decrease a little bit, and you have a better understanding of what you're dealing with- especially if you are an educator, especially if you are a teacher, an instructor. Some professors are leaning into it and incorporating it within their assignments, because a lot of students are going to use it whether you like it or not. So better to know a little bit more about this beast that you're facing. You don't have to incorporate it. But at least know what students are using it for, how they're using it, and and the implications for even how you write your syllabi, how you work on your assignments. Are you going to need to add a ChatGPT clause or something, some sort of language on your syllabus about the ways they can and can't use it for the course?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now let's go to some of the pros. One thing that immediately to me feels like a pro is the fact that it is an accessibility tool. Right now, there's a free and a paid version of it. But it means that anybody can access it. Anybody who has access to the internet can access it. Whereas before, if there were cases of plagiarism and things like that, folks had to go out of their way to hire someone to write papers for them, to go on a website and pay for things. I'm not saying you should use it to plagiarize. Don't do that- no. But I'm just saying, in terms of using it to generate ideas, to help with identifying things like templates, for explaining subjects in basic ways, for organizing information, synthesizing information, it can be used as a helpful tool. And I appreciate that it's available to everyone, that it's not gatekept, that it's not behind a paywall. That to me is a pro.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing that's a pro is that you can use it to brainstorm and generate ideas. Again, you're not relying on it- or I am not relying on it to teach me anything new. But I do like it as a way of generating ideas. I also think it's a great way of generating templates if you're writing emails, if you're working on a resume, if you're working on anything like that. I am not a fan of plagiarism, but I am a fan of taking a look at different templates for different forms of writing so that you can get a better understanding of what's expected of you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

A lot of times when I work with clients who are struggling with some sort of assignment in graduate school, it's because they don't even know what's expected of them. They're asked to write a dissertation proposal and they've never seen sample proposals in their field. That's one of the first assignments I give them, their homework. I say- okay, you're struggling with your proposal. Do you have any samples? Ask folks from your department for samples. Take a look at- how are they structuring it? How long is it? And then that can give you an idea of how long you might want yours to be, what type of sections you may want on yours. The same goes with templates. Taking a look at how something is structured, organized, what's expected- that can be helpful.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing that can be helpful is how you can use it to input information on it and then have it regurgitate the information to you in basic simple terms. You can say, take this paragraph and rewrite it in a way where a three year old would understand it, or an eight year old understand it, or a twelve year old will understand it. That's great because you can have different levels of complexity of sharing information depending on whether you're sharing knowledge to different audiences. Is it a discipline specific audience? Then the level of complexity will be higher. Is it a more general audience? Or even is it you sharing information to your parents or your neighbors? Then you'll want it to be more basic for them.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And then the last thing I want to say as a pro- and again, this is based off my limited understanding of it. I have been using it for a little bit over a month- just from the ways that I have access and used it. There might be other pros. There might be other cons that I don't yet know, I'm not yet aware of. But the last pro is that it's great for organizing and restructuring pre-existing information. I haven't done this yet, but I've heard that it can be great for double checking your writing for grammatical errors, syntactical errors. It can be used like another spell check tool. Just like a lot of folks use things like Grammarly or other apps to help them spell check things like that, you could use this AI tool for that as well.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now I'm going to share with you a couple of examples of how I've used it in my day to day life. As you know, I'm an academic coach. I'm also working on a book project, and I'm also a podcaster. I write blogs, and I write email newsletters, and I do content creation. So I share useful, valuable information on my social media, on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. But I'm most active on Instagram. So I'm constantly working and generating information and writing, and putting things out there that I find would be helpful to my audience- first gen BIPOC students. My areas of expertise are demystifying higher ed and teaching about sustainable productivity and personal development tools. If you're new to my podcast, that's what I'm all about. That's what you can expect from me.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

S in my business, one thing that I've found useful with this ChatGPT tool is that I can use it for generating ideas- generating ideas for content creation, for topics to cover on my podcast. And I'll ask it prompts. I'll say you are blah, blah, blah, and you're working on a podcast episode on blah, blah, blah. What are ten different ideas of topics you can cover? Then from there, I can see- do I like it? Do I not like the ideas? Which one can I then go off of? It just helps me to be even more creative with generating ideas.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

In your case, as a student, you could generate ideas for papers. You can generate ideas for - let's say, you're writing a paper and you want to kind of figure out - what would the counter argument look like? What are some of the gaps in my thinking? Then you can use the ideas of the gaps, or the counter arguments or anything else, and incorporate a response to that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another way I've used it is in generating summaries of podcast transcripts. I already use another AI tool for my podcast. I use otterai for generating my podcast transcripts, but I don't just let it do it on its own. That's the thing about these tools. You cannot rely on it to do all of your work for you. For instance, otterai- my VA and I, we use it to generate transcripts of all of my audio recordings. But then the next step is that my VA or myself, we'll go in and we'll edit the transcripts, because it'll look like a bunch of big paragraphs and a lot of things are misspelled. And if there's any Spanglish or Spanish, it won't pick that up at all. Some names it won't pick up either. So we have to do the extra editing step, no matter what. We can't rely on it solely for generating transcripts.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So in this case, pulling from the transcripts that we've already edited, I can then input that information to ChatGPT to generate summaries of these transcripts. Then from those summaries- usually I'll ask for it to give me a couple of bullets of summaries- I'll think about which I'm gonna keep, because I can tell what were the main ideas from what I remember. What are the main ideas from this episode I recorded or this guests that I had? And it's great, because it gives me ideas and language as a starting point- which I then can pull and write my own information off of that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

In your case, you could use this for summaries of articles, for generating summaries of books you've already read. Here's the main thing. It should be for material that you are already familiar with, for readings that you've already done. It should not be for you to learn something from scratch. I don't recommend it at all for that. I know actually some graduate students who use a website called genei.io for generating summaries of academic articles. I personally have not used it, but I am familiar. I know that it exists in case y'all want to check it out. But again, in every case, I say rely on it to help you, assist you with information you already know.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

The other way that I use it in my business is to assist me with generating discussion topics, generating interview questions for my podcast. In your case, you might be able to use it to generate ideas for teaching discussion sections or for in class discussion questions. The idea generation of it is a lot of fun. Again, it can induce a lot of creativity because it might generate ideas that you hadn't previously thought about.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now, in my day to day life- as you know, or some of you know- I have been living abroad for over a year now. I'm in Portugal, the language here is European Portuguese. E nao falo Portuguese muito bem. I'm trying to learn. I don't speak it very well. It sounds like Port-lish, or I don't even know. It's like it's a mix of Portuguese and English and Spanish. So one thing that I rely on in my day to day life are translation apps to help me with speaking and navigating my day to day life. I actually have a pretty good understanding of the language when I read it, and so-so when it's spoken. It depends on how fast someone is and how they enunciate certain words. But because I can understand it very well when I read, I can use ChatGPT to translate things for me. Sometimes, some memos I need to send via email and I need to send it in Portuguese. So I have had it translate from English to Portuguese, and then I can double check the work- double check the translation-because of my ability to understand the language once it's written. So I've used it for that.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I know other people who use it for for translating information as well. And if you're in a graduate program where a translation work is involved, you could always use it for your translation as well. But again, like I do, double check the work for any inaccuracies. The other way that I have used the ChatGPT tool is through my home educating and homeschooling. I have homeschooled my nine year old before. I'm not necessarily 100% homeschooling right now because he does go to a private school. But when we return back to the States later this year, we do plan on homeschooling again. So I'm pulling some resources, information, creating a plan. Some subjects I pull from curriculums that I know and trust. For instance, one of the websites that I really love is called Fish Tank Learning. It's great. I have found their math and language art lessons to be pretty good. I am a fan. I have different places that I source for different curriculums, depending on the topics and subject areas. And of course, I supplement, because there are certain areas like social studies, social justice, that I want to make sure that we cover with my son. Maybe I am not finding what I want to teach online, so I'm creating it on my own.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

In this case, how am I using ChatGPT? I feel like I'm going on a rant or on a tangent. I have started to use it to generate different homeschooling schedules. I'm not really sure what kind of pace we are going to have when we start homeschooling again, because I want to make sure that it works well for our family and for my son and his learning needs. Because my son is neurodivergent, I am a big fan of tailoring information, learning tools, to what works best for him. So we've been exploring the ideas of -what would you want to do? Would you want to learn one subject area a day? Two subjects a day, three subjects a day, four subjects today? Do you want to do two hours, three hours, four hours a day and just test it out? Based on these parameters, I've asked the chat box to generate schedules for me. So what would a two hour, three hour, four hour, five hours schedule look like? What would it look like if we're learning two subjects a day, four subject? You name it. It's provided some really great sample schedules that we can then test out and see what we like.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I've also used it to explain basic concepts. I help my son with homework every school night, and some subjects he doesn't understand right away. So if I've explained it to him in the way that I know and understand it, his teacher has taught it to him in a slightly different way that she knows and understands it, and he's still not getting it, I love going in and finding some sort of resource that can explain it to him in a different way. The chat box can actually explain a wide variety of subject areas in basic terms. You can say explain it to me in a way that a nine year old will understand. Again, it has to be something that I already know and I'm familiar with, because then I can double check to make sure that it's actually sharing the right information.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

In sum, in all of my examples, I double check the information. I am not relying on it solely to do work for me. I am asking for assistance in generating ideas on topics I have previous knowledge about - and ample knowledge about. That's the key for me. It's a supplemental tool. It's not a primary tool. I'm not having it teach me something new where I can't double check for biases or inaccuracies. I'm not having it generate writing that I will pass off as my own, because that would be completely unethical. So if I can say anything about how I am proceeding and how you might want to proceed, it's that I'm proceeding with curiosity and with caution. Like any tool, I'm always open and willing to learn about it and then see how it can be useful to me. But if it's not, I move on. I have to understand that there are risks and rewards involved in anything that we use.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

And again, if I know that this is the future of where we're going in terms of technology, and education, and access to information, then I want to be informed. That to me makes me feel like I am empowered to do something about it, because I am aware of it. I do think it can be used as a useful learning tool. I actually don't think that it will ever replace classrooms. I don't think it will ever replace teaching professions. Again, test it out. See what you think. Proceed with caution. But don't be afraid. Don't avoid it altogether, because I think that we're moving in that direction in a lot of different ways. I know some folks say- get with the times. And in this case, I have to somewhat agree.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Let's see how we feel. See how it goes. Be aware, be cautious. And that's all I have to say about the topic. Again, I feel like I've been wary of having this conversation on my podcast, because I know it's very - not sensitive, but it's a contentious topic and a lot of folks have very strong feelings about it. I don't have superduper strong feelings for or against it. That's why I am using it, playing with it. But again, it's not going to replace me. That's all I have to say. I hope you all have a great rest of your day.