Don’t fret about students using ChatGPT to cheat – AI is a bigger threat to educational equality

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Schools and universities are panicking about artificial intelligence (AI) and cheating. But AI presents far more significant threats to equity in education.

Fears of cheating typically arise from concerns about fairness. How is it fair that one student spends weeks labouring over an essay, while another asks ChatGPT to write the same thing in just a few minutes? Fretting about giving each student a “fair go” is essential to maintaining the idea of New Zealand as an egalitarian country.

But as with the myth of the “American dream”, the egalitarian narrative of New Zealand masks more pernicious inequities like structural racism and the housing crisis, both of which have an outsized – and decidedly unfair – influence on today's students.

These persistent inequities dwarf the threat of cheating with AI. Instead of excessive hand wringing about cheating, educators would benefit from preparing for AI's other inequities, all of which are showcased in OpenAI's latest large language model (LLM): GPT-4.

GPT-4, which has refined guardrails and more parameters than ChatGPT, is touted as safer and more accurate than its predecessors. But there's a catch. GPT-4 costs US$20 per month.

For some, that price will be inconsequential. But for those whose budgets have been squeezed thin by skyrocketing inflation, it may be a deal breaker. The democratising potential of AI technology is here, but only if you can afford it.

This digital divide puts students and educational institutions in two camps. Those with enough resources to enjoy the benefits of AI tools. And those without the same financial flexibility who get left behind.

It may seem small now, but as the cost of AI tools increases, this digital divide could widen into an immense gulf. This