Students globally express concerns about ChatGPT’s reliability: Study

An international study involving more than 23,000 higher education students, and published in the journal PLOS One, revealed trends in how they use and experience ChatGPT, highlighting both positive perceptions and awareness of the AI chatbot’s limitations.

New Delhi: Students globally have reported concerns about ChatGPT’s reliability, its potential to erode critical thinking skills, and ethical issues around its use, such as cheating and privacy, according to a new study.

An international study involving more than 23,000 higher education students, and published in the journal PLOS One, revealed trends in how they use and experience ChatGPT, highlighting both positive perceptions and awareness of the AI chatbot’s limitations.

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Prior research suggests that ChatGPT can enhance learning, despite concerns about its role in academic integrity, potential impacts on critical thinking, and occasionally inaccurate responses.

However, the few studies exploring student perceptions of ChatGPT in higher education have been limited in scope.

Dejan Ravselj of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and colleagues designed an anonymous online survey study aiming to provide a broader view.

Analysis of the survey results revealed several trends.

For instance, overall, participants tended to feel positively about ChatGPT, finding it valuable for brainstorming, summarising texts, academic writing, and simplifying complex information.

However, they also reported concerns about ChatGPT’s reliability.

Interestingly, less than a third of students (29 per cent) reported using ChatGPT for brainstorming, and only one in ten (11 per cent) for creative writing.

However, most students (70 per cent) found ChatGPT interesting to use, and a quarter (25 per cent) found it easier to interact with ChatGPT than with colleagues.

According to the study, the students’ perceptions varied across sociodemographic and geographic factors.

For instance, those in lower-income regions were more likely to perceive ChatGPT as essential support in the context of limited educational resources, while students in high-income regions placed greater value on ChatGPT’s innovative and advanced features.

The findings could help inform the design of higher education curricula and policies to harness the benefits of ChatGPT equitably across diverse student populations.

Future research could address some of this study’s limitations, such as by tracking students’ perceptions over time and including more students from low-income countries, said the authors.