An Oxford University professor has told students to use Artificial Intelligence to help them write tutorial essays in an exercise to discuss the merits of AI.
Associate Professor Steve New told undergraduates studying Economics and Management to use AI tools to help generate first drafts of essays before critiquing them.
Prof New said the tools, including ChatGPT, ‘should help you produce a much better essay than you would produce unaided’, if it was used ‘thoughtfully and critically’.
However, it is understood AI tools are only permitted in the tutorial essays, which play no part in degree grades, and that the use of AI in exams and other formal assessments is forbidden.
The tutorial essays generated with the help of AI are discussed and fact checked by students in small groups as part of their course.
Associate Professor Steve New told undergraduates studying Economics and Management to use AI tools to help generate first drafts of essays before critiquing them
An aerial view of All Souls College in Oxford University where a Professor told students to use AI to write essays
In guidance to students, Prof New said that AI should ‘increase your ability to think hard about the subjects you discuss, and make you more confident in framing a clear and persuasive argument’, The Telegraph reports.
He added: ‘But the document that emerges should be yours. You need to write stuff you will stand by. The AI can produce humdrum ‘some say this, some say that…meh’ essays in a fraction of a second; you should be producing compelling, tightly-argued, evidence-based prose that you believe in.’
The course notes that ‘AI might – without you realising – steer you towards particular intellectual or ideological positions’.
AI tools like Chat GPT are capable of producing detailed essays capable of passing doctors’ exams and writing scientific essays.
Under new guidance, English and Welsh Judges are allowed to use the technology to help them write legal rulings.
This is despite warnings AI can make up fictional cases that never happened.
MailOnline has contacted Oxford University.
By Daily Mail Online, December 13, 2023
