Hong Kong’s Baptist University bans students from using ChatGPT for class work

In letter sent to students, university warns students they will commit plagiarism if they take words or ideas from other sources, including ChatGPT

University of Hong Kong last week told students they were temporarily banned from using AI-powered chatbots and said long-term policy would need to be hammered out

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Launched by the Microsoft-backed OpenAI, ChatGPT has been fed vast amounts of data to generate human-like responses to text inputs. Photo: Getty Images/TNS

Published: 7:00am, 23 Feb 2023

Baptist University has become the second higher education institution in Hong Kong to ban students from using the controversial artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in their assignments due to concerns over plagiarism.

In a letter sent to all students on Wednesday, university vice-president of teaching and learning Albert Chau Wai-lap warned students they would commit plagiarism if they took words or ideas from other sources, including ChatGPT and other AI technologies and presented them as their own.

The penalties for plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty included reduced grades, course failure, suspension and dismissal, he noted.

The university “expects students to uphold academic integrity at all times”, he told students.

Baptist University has said it will regularly review its teaching skills, including the proper use of technologies to further learning. Photo: Nora Tam

Last week, the University of Hong Kong announced students were banned from using ChatGPT or similar tools for coursework, at least for now, until a wider discussion could be held to determine how the technology should be incorporated into learning.