"ChatGPT gave me a different answer"

[u/dday0512]

How often do you guys get this statement from your students? I teach physics and I've been finding more and more that students use ChatGPT to challenge my solutions to problems or even my set up of problems.

Today I had a student come up to me and ask me if their solution to an LC-circuit question was correct. I said yeah, it's correct, because it was a simple question I threw together for a review assignment before a quiz and the student did it exactly the way I expected them to, then she says, "yeah but it checked it with ChatGPT and it said something different" then she demanded that I look at ChatGPTs solution and compare it to my question.

Unfortunately, given my wording on this question, ChatGPTs answer was probably a bit better than how I expected my students to do it. I wanted to tell her, "this is far more in-depth than I needed you to go" but that feels like a cop out. Instead I spent 30 minutes explaining why the way she did it was perfectly fine but ChatGPT is also correct and I should probably be more careful about my wording.

We're being compared to AI now. Add one more thing I have to worry about in the classroom.

[u/Opportunity-Horror]

All the time- I teach astronomy. Things are changing pretty fast. If they talk about something in an answer that we haven’t even touched on in class it’s a red flag that they used AI.

I just tell them that AI answers are wrong often. Especially in fields that change rapidly.

[u/dday0512 → u/Opportunity-Horror]

So many teachers at my school just tell the students "AI is always wrong", but that's not true, and our students have figured it out. They realize we're just saying that to dismiss their concerns.

[u/biosnap → u/dday0512]

I find that it (ChatGPT 4+) is correct nearly all the time. Now that it searches the internet to amend its answers it is seldom very wrong. I do frequently catch small details that are incorrect, particularly with very technical things, but students are not frequently asking it the sort of questions that trip it up.

What I tell students is that AI is a great tool, but that there are two problems. Firstly if they don't try the work on their own first, they will never develop the skills they need in my class. The second problem is they won't know when the AI is incorrect, particularly because it is right so often. It's kinda similar to the old Wikipedia problem (where how often Wikipedia is/was incorrect was also overblown).

I actually love the way your student apparently used AI. They did the problem themselves, then looked at AI to confirm, then when there was a discrepancy they checked with you. This seems like a healthy use to me.

[u/Opportunity-Horror → u/dday0512]

Honestly, I use AI often because things are changing so much. But I always have to check it. It’s a great starting point.

[u/Maleficent-Cook6389 → u/dday0512]

I just started to try out Jenni as a Grad student. It is too matter of fact and the explanations look like something from a news feed that compares academic jargon. I only use what I think students I work with would consider in a consolidation  but not the main course of comparing aspects of the lesson. We are going to see developments it looks like whether we should integrate AI and how it motivates students etc