Essays written with ChatGPT feature repetition of words and ideas – study

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Repetition of words, tautology and paragraphs beginning with “however” are some tell-tale options of ChatGPT’s writing type, researchers have discovered.

The writing type of the factitious intelligence software is “bland” and “journalistic”, based on a Cambridge University Press and Assessment study.

It comes after the rise of generative AI instruments, like ChatGPT, has sparked considerations about dishonest amongst pupils within the schooling sector.

Researchers in contrast essays written by three first-year undergraduate college students, with the help of ChatGPT, with 164 essays written by IGCSE college students.

These essays have been marked by examiners and the undergraduates have been then interviewed and their essays have been analysed.

The study discovered essays written with the assistance of ChatGPT carried out poorly on evaluation and comparability expertise in comparison with non-ChatGPT-assisted essays.

But ChatGPT-assisted essays carried out strongly on data and reflection expertise.

Researchers recognized a quantity of key options of the ChatGPT writing type, which included the use of Latinate vocabulary, repetition of words or phrases and ideas, and pleonasms.

Essays written with the assistance of ChatGPT have been additionally extra seemingly to make use of paragraphs beginning with discourse markers like “however”, “moreover”, and “overall”, and numbered lists with objects.

The researchers mentioned ChatGPT’s default writing type “echoes the bland, clipped, and objective style that characterises much generic journalistic writing found on the internet”.

The report mentioned: “The students found ChatGPT useful for gathering information quickly.

“However, they considered that complete reliance on this technology would produce essays of a low academic standard.”

Lead researcher Jude Brady, of Cambridge University Press and Assessment, mentioned: “Our findings offer insights into the growing area of generative AI and assessment, which is still largely uncharted territory.

“Despite the small sample size, we are excited about these findings as they have the capacity to inform the work of teachers as well as students.”

She added: “We hope our research might help people to identify when a piece of text has been written by ChatGPT.

“For students and the wider population, learning to use and detect generative AI forms an increasingly important aspect of digital literacy.”