CHEAT GPT

At the high school Abhinash attended in India, calculators were forbidden. For tests, including the statewide university entrance exams, students wrote out their equations in longhand.

- SIMON LEWSEN 

They were being evaluated not only for their understanding of math but also for their ability to trudge through the steps of each equation, work that no scientist or engineer in the 21st century would ever need to perform.

In 2019, Abhinash moved to Toronto to pursue a degree in earth and environmental sciences. (Abhinash is a pseudonym. Like other students interviewed for this story, he asked me to withhold his real name because he has done things his professors may consider cheating.) In Toronto, he enrolled in a linear-algebra class, where, to his surprise, calculators were not merely permitted but required. The first time he brought one to an exam, it felt wrong, like showing up to a black-tie gala in jeans and a T-shirt. He placed the device on his desk and willed himself to touch it, instinctively feeling that doing so might violate a sacred rule. He quickly got over this fear. Soon, the very notion of a prohibition on calculators seemed ridiculous.

Abhinash was in the fourth year of his degree when a far more powerful tool hit the market. On November 30, 2022, OpenAI, a Microsoft-funded research lab in San Francisco, made its chatbot, ChatGPT, publicly available for free. In December, Abhinash was hanging out in the common room of his building with friends when one of them introduced the group to the program.

The guys were enthralled. They crowded around their buddy's laptop and began issuing commands to the bot, instructing it to write poems and song lyrics. Later that evening, two of the friends got into an argument over a group assignment, and one stormed out of the room. When he returned, he learned that his buddies had prompted ChatGPT to write an apology on his behalf-and to generate alternative versions in the style of a rapper, a pirate and a Shakespearean actor. Abhinash was fascinated by the program, although he couldn't fully grasp its purpose. It seemed more interesting than useful.