ChatGPT can pass exams: Could that be a threat to education systems?

ChatGPT has proved that it is able to pass the final exam for an MBA programme.

ChatGPT, a highly popular AI-based program that people use for generating dialogues, is being used in various sectors like healthcare, education, or legal systems. While the expectations from it are ever-increasing, concerns are also growing.

Experts are raising doubts that the pre-trained generative chat, which makes use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) maybe used the for cheating. Recently, a study found that the chatbot GPT-3 was able to pass the final exam for Master of Business Administration (MBA) program.

Prof. Christian Terwiesch of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Professor in his research paper “Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course,” has been quoted in a report as saying that the bot scored between a B- and B on the exam. He said the bot’s explanations were “excellent.”

ChatGPT appeared for a mock test

According to Terwiesch, the bot did an “amazing job at basic operations management and process analysis questions including those that are based on case studies.” The GPT-3 model used in the experiment seems to be an older version of the most recent ChatGPT bot that has become a controversial topic among educators and those who work in the field of AI. The latest version, “is fine-tuned from a model in the GPT-3.5 series,” says OpenAI’s website.

Researchers at a California-based healthcare provider, Ansible Health, had the chatbot appear for a mock, abbreviated version of the USMLE, which is required for doctors to obtain a license to practice medicine in the US.

The researchers fed questions from previous exams to ChatGPT and had the answers, ranging from open-ended written responses to multiple choice, independently scored by two physician adjudicators.

The tool received more than 50 per cent across all examinations, and approached the USMLE pass threshold of about 60 per cent. “ChatGPT is now comfortably within the passing range,” confirmed the researchers.

Institutions not keen on adopting chatbot

Even though the ChatGPT can produce images, video and audio, make arguments, summarise books, tell jokes, write code, and generally be useful to people, educators warn that the technology opens the door to widespread cheating on homework and take-home assignments, and many have been scrambling to rethink the nature of assessment or otherwise discourage students using the tool.

Earlier last month, New York City’s Department of Education announced a ban on ChatGPT from its schools’ devices and networks, while Australian universities said they were reinstating ‘pen and paper’ exams and beefing up cheating detection measures.