With the new advances of artificial technology, it can be easy for students to use this software for assignments and essays. As a bio major, A.I. technology, such as Chat GPT, can be used as a resource tool for lab reports and even presentations.
For my Bio 11A course at Reedley College, my instructor assigned a presentation, in which I am to give an oral speech in the form of a slide show. I am to choose a theme whether it be in biotechnology, gene, or evolution and do research on that specific theme. The topic I chose was the evolution of tigers. One of the assignments correlated with the presentation was to find 8 resources and submit them as a bibliography in APA format. I wanted to see how efficient Chat GPT was in finding resources and see if this software made it easier for students to cheat and how accurate the citations were.
There is a lot of research based assignments in biology as well as all STEM majors. Chat GPT, as of now, lacks the knowledge beyond 2021. This being said it cannot accurately construct a bibliography page with up to date sources if I needed sources as current as of 2022. It is also not connected to the internet so for my assignment, it would be unable to produce accurate peer-reviewed sources which is required for this specific assignment.
After doing my own research and comparing it to what Chat GPT gave me, I discovered that it lacks the capability to stay focused on the specific theme of my topic. I input the whole assignment prompt, replacing the words "for this assignment" with "evolution of tigers." From the A.I. generated bibliography, I found only 2 of the resources acceptable. However, 6 out of 8 of the resources had no correlation to my topic or theme whatsoever. They were broad in that sense and made it seem as if it corresponded to the assignment. If a student was to use Chat GPT for this assignment, they would have to be aware that some of the resources do not relate with their topic. It would actually be more work for students if they were trying to cheat. They would have to make sure each source corresponds with their assignment and exceeds with their instructor's assignment. Not only would they have to make sure of that, but would also have to do additional research to complete the assignment. It would be best to do the research themselves. Chat GPT could be used as a resource tool for that matter, as serve as a guide of what the assignment should look like but not to plagiarize.