How students can harness the power of Chat GPT.

chWhat is Chat GPT?

I’m sure by now most of you will have heard of Chat GPT, the AI chatbot that can provide almost indistinguishable humanlike answers in real-time to any question. In its first 5 days of launching its registered number of users grew to 1 million users, making it one of the fastest-growing tech platforms ever. Many in the sector have seen its evolution and wide-ranging usage as a groundbreaking development in the context of artificial intelligence.

Personal experience 

As a student, there are a few things I have learnt myself whilst using it which I hope to be useful. Firstly, general questions give general answers. The more parameters and specific guidelines you provide the better quality of the answer. Secondly, it is by no means perfect. As its popularity has grown and capacity remains limited it is increasingly common to struggle even to get on the platform, patience and perseverance are key. There are already thousands of LinkedIn posts, Twitter threads or blog articles outlining the way you can use Chat GPT in specific contexts.

What are the main ways a university student can use it?

1. Text Generation: It can assist with tasks such as generating an outline for a research paper, completing a coding project, or even writing an essay plan or section. 
2. Summarization: This feature allows the student to quickly obtain an overview of a complex topic or to identify key points from a long reading, which can be extremely useful when researching and writing a thesis or dissertation. It should by no means replace reading but can offer insight into an article or book section that can then be investigated further. 
3. Answering questions: incredibly useful for a university student trying to get their head around complex topics for the first time. Students can use ChatGPT to obtain a quick and accurate answer, which can help them to better understand the material and specific areas of confusion. 
4. Text completion: ChatGPT can complete a sentence or paragraph to make sure that the language is accurate and precise. This can help to improve the overall quality of the student's work or see an alternative way of writing something. 
5. Coding Assistance: ChatGPT can also be used to generate code based on the given context and prompt, particularly if a particular problem arises, ChatGPT can be used to suggest code solutions saving a significant amount of time and effort.

Looking forward 

At this point, I would like to stress that students should not look to this as a tool which means they have to do no work. Steps are already being taken to address concerns that homework or even coursework could become redundant. The reaction of Alleyns, a secondary school in London, highlights this, as they consider scrapping written homework essays altogether and instead opt for more research-based tasks that will then be discussed in class. This came after teachers could not tell the difference between pupil and AI-produced answers. 

Whatever industry you are looking to get involved in, the power of AI will become more and more prominent. Whether you are excited by the prospect of increasing AI presence and the growing influence it will have, or worried about its impact and societal consequences, it is critical you continue to follow developments closely. Chat GPT can help you as a student improve the standard of your applications and increase productivity. If used in the right way, it presents a fantastic tool that can be harnessed by applicants around the globe and is already being utilised by professionals across industries.