ChatGPT is not original and is exactly what humans need

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Consider a teenager, Jorge, who is caught in possession of a large amount of marijuana by a school administrator and will be expelled if reported to his probation officer. If the administrator does not report it, they are breaking the law; if they do, they sentence him to one of the worst schools in the city and probably to a second offense.

This is a case study we present to a class of 60 students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We ask them to pretend to be a teacher or administrator at the school and map out a course of action. An hour after their conversation, we bring you the analysis of the ChatGPT study.

The program suggested several anodyne solutions: “We must initiate a review of [the school’s] Existing policies and procedures related to substance abuse, with the goal of ensuring they are consistent, transparent and reflect best practice… The school must take a compassionate approach [but] also clearly communicate that drug abuse and related crimes will not be tolerated…This approach should be taken while ensuring that the school is responsive to the unique needs of its students, particularly those who are low-income and working class.”

Our graduate students initially did not perform better than this chatbot. They, too, were prone to regurgitating the same tired talk about justice, equity, and education, talk that seems appealing but lacks substance, providing no concrete focus beyond the vague and virtuous goals it should achieve. As one student commented: “We were saying interesting and formulaic things, instead of talking about something new like we said we wanted to when class started.”

The students were also visibly puzzled by the similarity of the ChatGPT solutions to theirs. They talked about how scary it was that these solutions sounded exactly like what a school would implement. They then questioned themselves and their ability to come up with solutions that differed from what others had been recreating for so long. They expressed feeling trapped in a “loop”. One student tried to ease the tension by dismissing ChatGPT’s contribution saying that it “doesn’t really say anything.” Another challenged him: “Did we really say something?”

However, it was after ChatGPT reflected back to the students their lack of imagination that they were able to start thinking of options that they, or any automatic language scribbler, would not have easily reached. They realized that the case was entirely focused on the administrators’ perspective, and that their earlier discussion had not left room for action involving teachers, students, and Jorge as well.

The students began to question the logic and legitimacy of existing structures, such as education and juvenile justice, that shape their choices and outcomes, and began to propose new and more creative approaches to Jorge’s case. One student joked that teachers, en masse, should smoke weed with Jorge (ie become targets for law enforcement, rather than remain innocent bystanders). Another spoke of abolishing the schools. A third gave an example of grandmothers destroying public property in pursuit of environmental justice. These ideas may seem absurd, but anything that alters existing thought patterns is likely to sound, at least at first, like nonsense.

By the end of the discussion, the students had not only explored their immediate, conscience-clearing responses in the context of Jorge’s case, but had also considered potential actions. The students began to realize that it is possible to both respect the law and reject it, if enough collective power has been established. For example, they could turn in Jorge and at the same time threaten to go on strike if he was expelled, without acting as mere administrators or mere saviors. Instead of abolishing the schools entirely, close this one school.