How good would ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI), really be in school? That’s what the Lower Austrian student council wanted to find out and had ChatGPT compete for the central high school diploma in German, English and mathematics. The program, which answers questions and writes texts at the push of a button, had to solve the tasks from the previous year.
The results were assessed by a teacher and compared with the solutions specified by the ministry. The chatbot achieved a positive performance in every subject and passed the Matura: In German and mathematics with a “sufficient”, in English the AI even achieved a “satisfactory”. The solutions were created with the third version of the program, said the state student council. In the meantime, the Californian company “Open AI” has already launched a new version.
“Many of the things that ChatGPT throws out are wrong and cannot be taken over one to one,” said AHS state school spokesman Marco Gayer to ORF Lower Austria. Nevertheless, the results are a wake-up call: “It is a classic demonstration of our current technical status and also a demonstration that the education system is lagging behind a bit in our time.”
The young people are therefore calling for increased digitization and better equipment in schools. They want to start a petition shortly, which should be introduced to the Lower Austrian state parliament. ChatGPT can be a source of inspiration for lessons, according to the state student representative. Classic learning by heart, on the other hand, has finally become obsolete.
