Students made 1,000,000 visits to ChatGPT fuelling fears of a cheating epidemic
Universities fear a cheating epidemic after more than one million visits to ChatGPT during the winter exam season.
There were 982,809 visits to the AI website registered from university Wifi in January and 128,402 in December across eight Russell Group unis.
The remaining two-thirds of the Russell Group said they do not track the internet browsing activity of users.
An investigation by The Tab reveals the scale of the challenge faced by academic institutions – with many now playing ‘catch up’ to tackle the issue.
The AI software has raised concerns around the world in how it helps students cheat in exams and coursework.
Olivia, a second-year student at the University of Manchester, didn’t use ChatGPT until a few weeks ago, but now can’t see herself turning back.
‘I saw more and more people using it in the library to plan essays,’ she said.
‘When I had an essay due and I was doing my research, I started putting in questions because it gives you quite a good concise summary of information around a topic.
‘If I’d written a paragraph for example, I would use it to improve a sentence I’d already written. I don’t think I’ve ever copied full bits and put it into an essay but I’ve definitely used it for making something sound better.’
Final year student at the University of Glasgow, Dylan, said: ‘With strikes, it’s been such a useful tool to actually have something explain stuff instead of just going through all this set reading independently.
‘Sometimes I’ll use it as a tool to assemble critical essays based around a theme or a novel that I’ll then go off and read.
‘Then sometimes when I have those essays I’ll use it to summarise quotes to make them a little easier to understand.
‘Lately with my dissertation I’ve been using it to summarise key critical ideas just to have open as I’m doing literature reviews and analysis.’
At the University of Warwick more than 850,000 visits were made to ChatGPT during the winter exam period between December 12 to 16 and January 9 to 14.
A spokesperson for the uni said it has taken an ‘active approach’ to deal with ChatGPT and is reviewing the design of future exams.
They added: ‘This includes not only the question to be answered, but also detection techniques showing where AI has been used inappropriately.’
Newcastle University had 112,290 recorded visits in December and January and said it is to ‘be expected’ that many staff and students have an interest in, and are actively exploring AI’.
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