“I can use ChatGPT to help with the essays and some theoretical work I struggle with, so it is like an aid for me, not a way of cheating,” he said, using an alias. “I will still check the answers from ChatGPT and will add my own points to it.”

Asian students from India to Singapore are no strangers to the pressures of test-taking, characterised by tough – some say brutal – entrance exams and endless assessments which often grade higher for rote learning, rather than creativity or soft skills.

China’s college entrance exam is tough, but is it the worst in Asia?

But ChatGPT, created by US start-up OpenAI, may have just changed the game.

It has taken the internet by storm after its online release in late November, astonishing social media users with its speed and finesse at spitting out answers to mathematical equations and complex essay questions. It can even write verse in a matter of seconds or minutes.

The app has put the academic world in a spin, raising an immediate quandary over the implications for education and whether ChatGPT will be a study aid levelling the playing field for tens of millions of bright students – who as Pranav insists simply need help with their writing skills – or become the most advanced tool ever to enable cheating.

In a series of tweets, Kevin Bryan, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, showed how he put one of his own exam questions through ChatGPT. Shocked, he described some of the bot’s answers as worthy of an A grade.

“You can no longer give take-home exams/homework … Even on specific questions that involve combining knowledge across domains, the OpenAI chat is frankly better than the average MBA at this point. It is frankly amazing,” he tweeted.

Personal assistant

Online, students and teachers alike are sharing examples of ChatGPT, currently free of charge, solving complex equations and producing everything from philosophy essays to cover letters for job applications.

A high school student at an international school in Indonesia said she uses the chatbot as a personal assistant of sorts, comparing it to a more complex version of Apple’s Siri in its ability to retrieve information on the basis of a prompt.

“I have been preparing for my final exams for months, and instead of going to Google when I need to understand a concept, I have been trying to put it into ChatGPT, and it gives me all the information I need in one place,” she said.

“I will probably also use it to help me with my essays for my [university] applications next year,” she said, as she hopes to apply to schools in Australia and Canada.

In the age of AI, human skills are needed more than ever

A Singaporean student, who only wanted to be known as Melvin, 25, said many of his peers used ChatGPT and other similar AI-powered tools like Grammarly to save time and because they helped with fact-checking.

The final-year business analytics major said he turned to ChatGPT for “coding support”.

“I use if for my assignments because search engines will only be able to provide recommendations based on keyword searches. ChatGPT, being an AI-generated tool, would be able to interpret meaning and combine different sources,” he said.

Many of his peers in school also used these applications and did not consider them a form of cheating, he added.

“As we move towards a digitalised society, shouldn’t we rely on digital tools to aid us in our day-to-day tasks?” he said.

Experts across the Asia-Pacific region argue, however, that ChatGPT might be more suitable for some subjects than others, and say its limitations become evident in assignments where students have to form arguments or take a stance on a topic.

“ChatGPT writes very pedestrian, and often balanced essays, as it has been carefully designed to offer middle-of-the-road responses,” said Toby Walsh, a professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney.

“Actually taking a position, or debating a particular side of a topic, will be quite difficult for ChatGPT,” he added.

Academic dishonesty?

The intelligent chatbot has sparked ample hand-wringing In some academic circles over cheating, educators told This Week in Asia, in particular if students attempt to represent AI text as their own.

But some experts say the best way forward is to introduce the tool into the classroom, and make students aware of its shortcomings.

“We should focus on teaching students how to use it, how to train it, and more importantly, to see its limitations,” said Jonathan Sim, who teaches the Philosophy of Computing and Data Analytics at the National University of Singapore.

That way, they will be more likely to use ChatGPT as a tool to help them in their studies, and not rely on it as a crutch or a way to cheat, he said.

Shunning it might be a missed opportunity, losing a rare tool to help students expand on their original ideas, he added.

And while there has been some discourse suggesting a return to in-person testing is the only way to ensure cheating is limited, some educators say the focus should shift towards creating tests and assignments that require more critical thinking as opposed to recitation.

“We have to adapt how we assess people’s abilities, cognisant of the fact that in the real world, they will be able to use these tools,” Walsh said.

‘Cat-and-mouse’

The backlash is gathering momentum.

“Students who don’t have the right guidance to use something like this won’t be able to control or be responsible in their usage of this,” said Chirag Shah, professor in the Information School at the University of Washington.

“There are still inherent issues and biases in some of the chatbot’s answers,” he added.

Schools have traditionally relied on plagiarism detectors, such as Turnitin – which also uses AI functionality – to confront cheating.

CEO Chris Caren said in a blog post that the Turnitin software is able to detect some forms of AI-assisted writing, and is working to enhance its ability to recognise ChatGPT writing.

“It becomes a cat-and-mouse game,” Shah said. “There is a question of how effective your detection techniques can get compared to these AI chatbots that are constantly learning and being improved to avoid detection.”

On TikTok, some users are sharing workarounds to detection software. One user, for example, suggested pasting AI-written text into another AI-powered paraphrasing tool, QuillBot.

How artificial intelligence can create smarter classes and students

Meanwhile, observers also noted that AI tools like ChatGPT are here to stay, and can go a long way in benefiting students.

In 2014, an OECD survey found the average 15-year-old Singaporean student was spending roughly nine hours a week on homework, nearly double the global average – a reflection of the country’s tough academic climate.

Sherine Josal, 18, a second-year polytechnic student in Singapore, has not used ChatGPT before but has used a similar tool which was developed by a teacher in her school.

“[ChatGPT] is kind of like a tutor or a teacher but it’s something I could use 24/7 and ask for help from,” she said. “I’m assuming this would be more reliable than just Googling my questions.”

Walsh from the UNSW said ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise learning.

“Just imagine, all of us could have our own personalised mathematics tutor that would be infinitely patient and could provide unbounded numbers of test questions for us to try out,” Walsh said.

“I think it has great potential to allow us to ensure that more people can access high quality education around the world,” he added.