ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is making waves in the academic community not as a teaching tool but as a possible adversary of essay ghostwriting. Essay ghostwriter services take advantage of students’ desperation for higher grades by providing them with written work that has been ghostwritten by someone else.
While the legitimacy of providing such services varies, it’s clear they’re good for business. It has been reported that the demand for contract cheating increased by a factor of ten during periods of lockdown due to the epidemic. In particular, $12 billion was placed on the market value of industry leader Chegg.
The Marketization of Education
Some people believe that educational institutions have become profit-driven companies as a result of the steadily increasing expense of education as well as the unpredictability of whether or not graduates will find jobs that pay well. Students might be motivated to look at different ways of earning their degrees as a result of this perspective.
Even though their services are considered immoral, some people who work in the contract cheating industry argue that the education system as a whole is the one that is failing pupils because it makes promises it cannot keep.
Threat of ChatGPT
Enter ChatGPT, a chatbot with artificial intelligence that can produce written content. Students who are looking for academic support are increasingly turning to this resource because of its popularity. Essay ghostwriters believe that it poses a significant risk to their line of work and should be avoided at all costs. A number of business owners operating in this sector have cited the availability of ChatGPT as the primary reason for the precipitous drop in customer demand.
According to the results of a survey by Study.com, a sizable percentage of college students have used ChatGPT to get assistance with their assignments and essay writing, indicating that the platform is rather well-liked. Nevertheless, a more in-depth investigation showed lower results, which suggests that even while ChatGPT is gaining traction, its popularity may be reaching a plateau at this point.
The cheating future
Some essay ghostwriters have a positive outlook on the industry’s prospects, despite the proliferation of AI technologies such as ChatGPT. They are of the opinion that students may seek their services in order to evade detection as AI detection tools get increasingly sophisticated. On the other hand, the dependability of such detection tools is still up for debate, which leaves the future of cheating open to interpretation.
The moral dilemma
The increasing prevalence of AI-driven solutions in the educational sector poses ethical problems concerning the maintenance of academic integrity. While AI has the potential to be a useful educational tool, its abuse for the sake of cheating contradicts the fundamental principles of learning and the acquisition of knowledge. Beyond the conduct of individual students, this discussion extends to the ethics of educational institutions and the services they provide.
It is essential to strike a balance between using artificial intelligence for legitimate educational objectives and prohibiting its use for cheating, as technology continues to have an increasing impact on the educational system. The proliferation of resources such as ChatGPT highlights the necessity of taking preventative actions to ensure academic honesty and protect the value of education.
The conventional method of essay ghostwriting is being called into question as a result of ChatGPT’s disruptive presence in the field of academic support services. The ethical ramifications of this evolution highlight how important it is to cultivate a culture of academic honesty while simultaneously utilizing AI to improve educational performance. Although the future of cheating in education is still unclear, one thing is certain: technology will undoubtedly play a significant part in determining its course.
