Observation｜Hong Kong colleges and universities are embracing ChatGPT one after another, and they are busy preparing for the new semester reform during the summer vacation

Source: The Paper

Author: Hu Xiner, an intern, Shao Wen, a reporter from The Paper

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI‌

"ChatGPT may replace some traditional teachers. But if the teacher is very empathetic and able to help and support students, it will not be replaced by AI. Education should not be teaching and learning (teaching and learning), but should It is learning and teaching (learning and teaching), learning first and then teaching, but AI will reawaken the characteristics that these educators should have."

"As the last stage for most people from studying to working in society, in addition to teaching ability, universities should also teach humanistic feelings and cultivate college students' caring and empathy. These are the essential differences between human beings and AI."

The traditional teaching model has been rewritten by ChatGPT. Universities in Hong Kong are embracing the "AI craze" at different paces, deeply integrating AI with teaching.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (hereinafter referred to as HKUST) took the lead in introducing ChatGPT. On June 1st, HKUST officially provided the HKUST version of ChatGPT for students and faculty members. It is the first university in Hong Kong to provide ChatGPT for students and faculty members. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Baptist University and other colleges and universities have also successively released guidelines for the use of AI tools, and jointly hope that teachers and students will critically explore and use AI carefully to ensure academic integrity.

"The relationship between teachers and students is first established on trust. ChatGPT as an external factor may indeed affect the trust between teachers and students. But when teaching, as teachers, we should first choose to trust students." Curriculum and Thomas Chiu, assistant professor of the Department of Teaching, said in an interview with The Paper, “ChatGPT allows people to easily acquire knowledge by pressing a keyboard, but it also accelerates our reflection on higher education. Teaching in higher education cannot be just Focus on transferring knowledge and submitting assignments, but should focus on the process and ability of information acquisition."

"Inequality in access to AI technology may also lead to inequalities in education, because the distribution of resources in society has never been fair, and English is currently still dominant in the training of large language models." Wang, an English lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University Simon Wang told The Paper, “Learning to communicate with AI through programming and asking questions (prompts) is crucial, so university education needs to cultivate students’ AI literacy to focus on the collaboration between humans and AI, and help students develop A skill that is difficult for AI to replace."

In addition to setting off an upsurge in higher education, AI will also enter junior high school classrooms in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Education Bureau launched AI course textbooks for junior high schools on June 19, introducing cutting-edge generative AI such as ChatGPT. Nearly half of the content focuses on the ethics and social impact of AI. The bureau pointed out that ChatGPT can be a valuable educational tool, but be aware of the ethical issues of plagiarism, and expects all public secondary schools to plan as soon as possible to arrange 10 to 14 hours of AI in the "Information and Communication Technology Curriculum" in the 2023/24 school year course professor.

"Universities cannot stop the arrival of ChatGPT"

As the first ChatGPT officially provided to students by universities in Hong Kong, the HKUST version of ChatGPT is valid for one year. It is the GPT-3.5 version of the ChatGPT on the market. It is developed by the school's information technology service center and runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI platform. run. The cost of the ChatGPT is paid by the school, so there will be a limit to the amount of use of teachers and students. Each person can use 500,000 tokens (the smallest unit in the text, a word or a punctuation mark) and 20 tokens per month.

Sean McMinn, director of the Center for Educational Innovation at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, holds a workshop for educators on the impact of ChatGPT on higher education. Image source: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

"The impact of AI on education is fundamental, and colleges and universities cannot stop the arrival of ChatGPT." Guo Yike, chief vice president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, put forward an outlook on the future education development of the school. "We hope that in the future, we can establish a new method of university education based on AI, and cultivate pioneer talents in this new education revolution."

"I think the introduction of ChatGPT by HKUST reflects the school's courage to embrace new technologies." Yang Yun (pseudonym), a third-year student at HKUST, said, "Although it is the same version as ChatGPT on the market, the school's ChatGPT generates answers slightly slower. A little bit, and the answers given are not as specific and detailed as ChatGPT on the market." HKUST said its ChatGPT chat data is protected and can only be accessed by users. "Assuming that the questions I ask involve my privacy, I may be inclined to use the school's ChatGPT."

Other Hong Kong universities are also stepping up their pace to embrace generative AI. In the guidelines released by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in March, the use of AI is divided into four situations: prohibiting the use of all AI tools, using AI only with the prior permission of the teacher, needing to clearly explain to the teacher that he uses AI, and allowing the teacher to freely use AI. Use AI. Zhao Jianfeng explained in the interview, "The teaching syllabus has been formulated before ChatGPT exploded, so the guidelines classify the use of AI into four levels, aiming to allow teachers and students to adapt and understand AI step by step."

In addition, the University of Hong Kong is providing free trial services such as Open AI's ChatGPT and Vincent graph tool DALL-E 2 for faculty members, and released the ChatGPT API (Application Programming Interface) to enable researchers and developers on campus to better build With custom apps that utilize ChatGPT. “Once the school’s generative AI working group develops policies and guidelines for student use, the school will make ChatGPT available to students,” said Ian Holliday, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, in an email to faculty and staff on April 14. express.

It is worth mentioning that the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) has opened GPT services to all faculty, staff and students since June 5th. It is led by the Office of the President of the University and jointly constructed by the Information Hub and the Information Technology Office. Unlike HKUST, which only supports GPT-3.5 version, teachers and students of HKUST (Guangzhou) can use GPT-4 version, and the service area is on campus, and users can only access it through the campus network.

Hong Kong Baptist University published guidelines on the use of generative AI tools on the campus system on July 13.

"The introduction of large models will become an opportunity for educational reform"

In the just-concluded spring semester, there have been some cases in Hong Kong universities where students' homework was judged as plagiarism due to the use of AI tools. Some students directly use all the original texts generated by ChatGPT to submit their assignments, but there are also some cases that are misjudged by the detection system as plagiarism. Therefore, various universities emphasize "originality of assignments and academic integrity" in their guidelines.

"Plagiarism itself does not appear because of ChatGPT, but ChatGPT makes plagiarism more popular. Directly copying the original text generated by ChatGPT is definitely plagiarism, but at the same time, we must also think about it. If students use ChatGPT to help analyze texts, they can ask teachers questions like usual. Let’s ask ChatGPT the same way, does this count as plagiarism?” Zhao Jianfeng believes that “plagiarism” may need to be redefined and explained in assignment assessment.

Wang Hao pointed out the importance of transparent use of AI by teachers and students. "If AI is used to assist in completing homework, students need to let the teacher know. For example, write a statement about the use of AI, indicating the purpose of using AI software and which part of the assignment it is used in. If the teacher uses AI to prepare courseware, the same Note this at the bottom of the material."

It will be a very busy summer for teachers in Hong Kong universities, as there will be a need to incorporate AI into teaching for the new semester, and update course materials and plans. Regarding the integration of AI and education, Wang Hao believes that teachers should guide students to use AI, so that students can see learning as a process rather than just focusing on results. "At the same time, we need to maintain human creativity and uniqueness when communicating with AI. Therefore, I do not recommend using ChatGPT-generated content as a source of information, nor can it be directly quoted."

"The introduction of large models will become an opportunity for educational reform. In the past, we talked about 'reading thousands of books, traveling thousands of miles', because the understanding and application of knowledge are often transformed through our own experience. But the introduction of large models, It may make the acquisition of knowledge relatively easy and flat.” Ma Xiaojuan, an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said at the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference Education Forum, “Now with the development of large models and AI, it is possible to 'seek It is easy to find the door to enter through the door. But how to let our students "break through the door", transform the flat knowledge intake into three-dimensional knowledge experience and application, and find a path suitable for their own development, this is the future of education key."

"The large model realizes the personalized teaching that could not be achieved because of the efficiency. Perhaps in the future teaching, the role of interaction will change from the teacher and the student to the tripartite, that is, the student, the teacher and the large model, and the respective role positioning It is also evolving with the development of large-scale model technology." Lin Dahua, a professor of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and an associate professor of the Department of Information Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, also said at the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference Education Forum.

"ChatGPT may replace some traditional teachers. But if the teacher is very empathetic and able to help and support students, it will definitely not be replaced by AI. Education should not be teaching and learning (teaching and learning), but should be Learning and teaching (learning and teaching), on the contrary, AI will reawaken the characteristics that these educators should have.” Zhao Jianfeng also emphasized that ChatGPT will not only accelerate the transformation of homework assessment methods, but also change the interaction of teachers in class form. "In the future, we will focus more on discussions and presentations in the classroom, and reduce the proportion of essays."

In the era of AI, universities should pay more attention to humanistic feelings

There is still a year before her undergraduate graduation. Yang Yun, who is currently studying information systems at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is worried about her future employment. "Before ChatGPT appeared, I wanted to develop in the direction of business analysis, data analysis, etc. But in these fields, there is a lot of room for ChatGPT to replace manual labor. I hope to learn more technical knowledge in the future, so that I can Compared with others, I have an advantage. But if the professional ability is not enough, I will consider changing the direction of employment.”

Cheng Yi (pseudonym), a sophomore majoring in digital media and communication at Hong Kong Baptist University, believes that ChatGPT can modify some basic codes and guide each step accurately, but it cannot help more complex codes. "ChatGPT is also an 'artifact' for internship interviews. When you learn basic information in unfamiliar fields in fragments, such as some professional terms from major Internet companies, it can collect and sort out knowledge relatively comprehensively, build a clear macro framework, and Divergence provides examples to help you systematically prepare for interview questions from different angles."

Lu Tong (pseudonym), a sophomore sociology student also from Hong Kong Baptist University, is very worried that personal data will be stolen to train large models. "Whenever I send my opinions to ChatGPT, I am afraid that it will use my data to train itself, and may provide my answers to other users." In addition, Lu Tong believes that the only advantage of ChatGPT in social science is Quantitative computing, "We originally needed to use SPSS (statistical analysis software for social science) to calculate data. Perhaps ChatGPT can help us process it faster, but AI does not help much in theoretical understanding of sociology."

"When searching for historical celebrities, I found that ChatGPT provided completely fictitious content." Kang Yan (pseudonym), a third-year student in the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, pointed out that ChatGPT often "lies" in terms of historical facts, and fabricated documents lead to historical errors . Kang Yan also found that some students around him have begun to blindly rely on ChatGPT. "The biggest risk of using AI is to wait for ChatGPT to 'feed' you the answer, and you can't distinguish the authenticity of the information. When people become dependent on AI , is actually gradually losing its own subjectivity and becoming an object attached to AI."

"Hong Kong has very little humanistic care. In a society where efficiency and interests are paramount, the emergence of AI is a blow to human beings. As the last stage for most people from studying to working in society, universities, apart from Teaching ability should be more about teaching humanistic feelings, and cultivating the care and empathy of college students. These are the essential differences between human beings and AI.” Li Qing (pseudonym), a junior student in the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, hoped that the university can play an important role in education. In the new meaning given to the mental outlook of college students, re-reflect on the positioning of human beings in the era of AI.

From the perspective of education, Wang Hao hopes that AI technology can be open sourced to solve the problem of inequality. "The distribution of knowledge and wealth has always been unequal, and education can relatively promote social mobility. AI should become a public resource, so that everyone has the opportunity to acquire and learn, which is very important for large-scale ecology and society matter."

(To respect the wishes of the interviewees, Yang Yun, Cheng Yi, Lu Tong, Kang Yan, and Li Qing are pseudonyms)