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New York City public schools banned access to ChatGPT, an artificial-intelligence chatbot, on its internet networks and school devices after officials raised concerns that students could use the AI program to answer questions, do homework or write essays.
ChatGPT quickly drew attention from the public and students after its November release, with some industry observers calling it one of the most intelligent AI applications ever created. The program crossed a million users a few days after its launch. And its popularity has been a boon to its developer, OpenAI, which the Journal reported this week is in talks to sell shares at a $29 billion valuation. That would make it one of the most valuable U.S. startups, on paper.
ChatGPT could upend entire industries and schools by automating certain jobs or offering intelligent answers to almost any question. Many students have delighted in it, while teachers have panicked. The chatbot’s answers are often so colloquial that it can be difficult for teachers to know if a student has used the program to cheat. But the chatbot doesn’t always provide accurate information.
New York City’s Department of Education, which runs the largest school district in the country, said this week that it had “concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.”
“While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” said
Jenna Lyle,
a spokeswoman for the department.
An OpenAI spokeswoman said the company was developing measures to help people identify text generated by ChatGPT. “We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else,” she said.
ChatGPT has raised concerns in schools. Students could ask the chatbot to write code or craft prose about any topic, like equating the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to an existentialist text. New York City’s education department appears to be the only one in the U.S. to restrict access to the program.
Educators have said that while ChatGPT could help students cheat, it could also be used as a search engine to help them learn new information.
ChatGPT has been banned from other places. Stack Overflow, an online community for software developers, has temporarily banned users from posting any text or code generated by ChatGPT. One of the world’s largest machine learning conferences, the International Conference on Machine Learning, has banned papers written using the program.
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The restrictions may be hard to enforce in New York City schools. Education officials can’t stop students—or teachers—from opening the chatbot on Wi-Fi networks or devices that aren’t affiliated with their schools. They could also potentially use their cellular network on campus to access ChatGPT.
New York City’s education department said this week that individual schools could request that the department grant access to ChatGPT.
Chalkbeat, an education news site, earlier reported the ban.
OpenAI released ChatGPT at a challenging time for U.S. public education. U.S. public schools have lost more than a million students since the pandemic began, forcing some districts to close underused schools. School officials blamed the enrollment decline on falling birthrates, a rise in home schooling and growing competition from private and charter schools.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com
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