GenAI & Ethics:
Investigating ChatGPT, Gemini, & Copilot
Torrey Trust
Professor of Learning Technology �University of Massachusetts Amherst
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This slide deck was last updated June 25, 2024.
Table of Contents
GenAI Chatbots
GenAI Chatbots: ChatGPT (by OpenAI)
ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, is a machine learning model that is able to generate human-like text based on the input provided.
The free version of ChatGPT runs on GPT 3.5 with limited access to GPT 4.0o (omni).
The paid version ($20+/month) of ChatGPT runs on GPT 4.0 and 4.0o (omni) and allows for more advanced functionality like designing GPTs.
ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, and reached 100 million users by the start of 2024.
ChatGPT has already been integrated into many different fields and careers.
Research has shown that users of ChatGPT complete more tasks, finish tasks more quickly, and have higher-quality results than non-users.
GenAI Chatbots: Copilot (by Microsoft)
Copilot, a large language model developed by Microsoft, is a machine learning model that is able to generate human-like text based on the input provided.
Copilot’s responses include links to Internet-based resources to verify the accuracy and credibility of the information provided.
Script on screen:
“They say I will never open my own business. Or get my degree. They say I will never make my movie. Or build something. They say I’m too old to learn something new. Too young to change the world. But I say, Watch Me.”
Writing on MS Copilot then says: “Quiz me in organic chemistry.” MS Copilot then generates a question about an organic molecular formula, providing multiple choice options. Commercial ends with MS Copilot being asked “Can you help me” and it responds “Yes, I can help.” Screen script then says “Copilot, your everyday AI companion. Anyone. Anywhere. Any device.”
GenAI Chatbots: Gemini (by Google)
Gemini, a large language model developed by Google, is a machine learning model that is able to generate human-like text based on the input provided.
Gemini has access to a massive dataset of text and code that is constantly being updated, which allows it to stay current on information. Its responses often include links to Internet-based resources.
Because Gemini is a Google tool, it can be used to summarize YouTube (owned by Google) videos.
Data & Privacy
OpenAI Requires ChatGPT Users to be 13 Years or Older
The use of ChatGPT by individuals under 13 years old would violate the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), since OpenAI collects a lot of user data!
Use of ChatGPT by 13-18 year olds requires parental permission
OpenAI collects a LOT of user data, including user’s time zone, country, dates and times of access, type of computer/device you’re using, computer connection!
Here’s an example of the type of data it might collect from a user: https://webkay.robinlinus.com/
OpenAI collects any information you input as data, so if you write a prompt including any personally identifiable information about your students, it keeps that data; and is a possible FERPA violation.
Likewise, if you ask a student to use ChatGPT to revise a college admissions essay that includes information about a trauma they experienced, OpenAI collects and keeps that data!
Quite simply, they use your data to make more money (e.g., improve their products)!
You can opt out of having your data used to improve the way they train their model!
Way down at the bottom of their Privacy Policy, they also note that they are collecting Geolocation data!
Want to learn more (and quite possibly be scared about) the collection of geolocation data?
Check out this New York Times Interactive: “Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They’re Not Keeping It Secret”
And, read “Google tracked his bike ride past a burglarized home. That made him a suspect.”
Gemini Requires Gemini Users to be 13 Years or Older
Google Workspace for Education account holders under 18 years old will not be able to use Gemini.
Students older than 13 would need to use their personal Gmail account to access Gemini.
Google collects a LOT of user data, including user’s “conversations” with the chatbot, usage data, location data, and feedback.
If you are 18 years or older, Google stores your activity (e.g., any “conversations” you have with Gemini) for up to 18 months. They also collect your location data, IP address, and home/work address.
Google collects any information you input as data, so if you write a prompt including any personally identifiable information about your students, it keeps that data; and is a possible FERPA violation.
Likewise, if you ask a student to use Gemini to revise a college admissions essay that includes information about a trauma they experienced, Google collects and keeps that data!
Quite simply, Google uses your data to make more money (e.g., improve their products).
You can change your location permissions for Google.
Microsoft Requires Copilot Users to be 13 Years or Older
Microsoft seems to have more data and privacy protections in place for children and young people.
Copilot in Bing has data retention and deletion policies…
That means you can better control your data!
Microsoft does not seem to collection location data from users.
Any prompts that you input into Copilot or anything you create with Copilot, Microsoft (and its affiliated companies/third party partners) can use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, reproduce, edit, sublicense, and translate.
They can use your prompts and creations (without paying you) however they see fit (aka to make more money!) if you are using the free version. Enterprise and licensed versions protect user prompts/creations.
So, if your students come up with a super amazing prompt that turns Copilot into a tutor for your class…Microsoft will own that prompt and could use/sell/share it!
Privacy & Data Overview
How to Protect Student Data & Privacy
Bias
This article highlights multiple types of bias, including machine/algorithmic bias, availability bias, representation bias, historical bias, selection bias, group attribution bias, contextual bias, linguistic bias, anchoring bias, automation bias, and confirmation bias.
GenAI tools are often trained on English-only data scraped from the Internet; therefore, their output is biased toward presenting American-centric and Westernized views.
Considerations for Educators
Engage students in investigating how generative AI tools are designed (e.g., What data they are trained on? Why that data was selected? How will that data produce biased output?).
Encourage students to reflect upon how biased AI output can shape thinking, learning, education, and society.
Bonus: Ask students to design a code of ethics for AI developers in order to reduce the harms done by biased AI output.
Resources:
AI-Generated Feedback & Grading
OpenAI acknowledges that the biases in ChatGPT can negatively impact students, especially, for example, when using the tool to provide feedback on work by English language learners.
LLMs, like ChatGPT, exhibit covert stereotypes that are MORE negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever recorded!
What does that mean if you use these tools to evaluate/grade/provide feedback on writing by African American students?
Leon asked ChatGPT-4o to grade student writing by providing the exact same text and simply changing the student names…and the bias in grading became very visible.
You could use Google’s new “Help Me Write” feature to quickly generate feedback on student work…but you risk violating FERPA and student’s intellectual property rights (students own the copyright of whatever they write/record) by uploading that text as data to Google.
Considerations for Educators
If you use GenAI tools for student feedback or grading, will you be transparent about your use of these tools?
If so, how might that shape student reactions to the feedback/grades you provide?
Will using GenAI tools to generate feedback save you time? Or will it take more time because you have to revise/remix the feedback to include your own thoughts?
Have a conversation with students AI-generated feedback/grades and explore the potential benefits and harms of using AI tools in this way (see Question #2 from the Civics of Technology Curriculum).
Resources:
Making Stuff Up (aka Hallucinations)
OpenAI states that ChatGPT can give incorrect and misleading information. It can also make up things!
OpenAI’s Terms of Use states that when you use ChatGPT you understand and agree that the output may not always be accurate and that it should not be relied on as a sole source of truth.
Google acknowledges that “Gemini will make mistakes.”
Gemini has a “double-check feature”...but it too can make mistakes.
Google provides these disclaimers in its “Generative AI Additional Terms of Service.”
Microsoft downplayed the fact that Copilot can be wrong.
Copilot often (but not always) provides in-text links to sources to verify information.
Considerations for Educators
Teach students how to critically evaluate the output of generative AI chatbots; and not to take what these tools produce at face value!
Resources:
Readings:
Academic Integrity
With the ability to generate human-like text, generative AI chatbots have raised alarms regarding cheating and academic integrity
This recent study found that…
While another recent study found that…
Interestingly…
Even still…students need to learn when it is okay to use generative AI chatbots and when it is not okay, or else they might end up like…
Did you know that…
Representing output from ChatGPT as human-generated (when it was not) is not only an academic integrity issue, it is a violation of OpenAI’s Terms of Use.
Considerations for Educators
Middle and high school students might not have ever read their school’s or district’s Academic Honesty policies.
College students often gloss over the boilerplate “academic integrity” statement in a syllabus.
Potential Steps to Take:
Tips for (Re)designing Your Academic Integrity Syllabus Policy
Reflect - This author (winner of a prestigious writing award) used ChatGPT to write 5% of her book… would you let your students submit a paper where 5% of it was written by AI?
Resources for Educators
Copyright & Intellectual Property
Several authors are suing OpenAI for using their copyrighted works to train ChatGPT.
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using its articles to train their AI tools.
Was it legal for OpenAI to scrape public, and often copyrighted, data from the Internet for free to train their tool?
Also, who owns the copyright of AI-generated work. If AI generates a new idea for a life-saving invention, does the person who wrote the prompt get the copyright/patent? Or OpenAI?
Considerations for Educators
Many academic integrity policies state that it is okay for students to use text generated from AI, as “long as they cite it.”
But, should students really be citing AI-generated text, when AI tools were designed by stealing copyrighted text from the Internet? Or, should students go to the original source and cite that?
This might be a conversation worth having with your students!
Resources:
Human Labor
OpenAI can use any data it collects from you to improve its services; thus helping it make more money (aka you are providing free labor!).
OpenAI states that you will not be given any compensation for providing feedback on the quality of ChatGPT’s output (aka you are providing free labor!).
Google can use any data it collects from you to improve its services; thus helping it make more money (aka you are providing free labor!).
Google states that it benefits from your feedback and data (aka you are providing free labor!).
Any prompts that you input into Copilot or anything you create with Copilot is immediately owned by Microsoft.
They can use your prompts and creations (without paying you) however they see fit (aka you are providing free labor!).
Many companies, including OpenAI, exploit human workers to review and train data for their AI technologies.
Considerations for Educators
Engage students in a conversation about whether they feel it is ethical for companies to use their data to make more money.
Encourage students to investigate the exploitation of data and human labor to improve AI technologies and make AI companies more money.
Resources:
Environmental Impact
Considerations for Educators
Encourage students to investigate the environmental cost of the design and use of generative AI chatbots.
Bonus: Ask them to identify ways to reduce the environmental impact of these technologies.
Resources:
Spreading Misinformation
This article examines how AI has made it easy for anyone to rapidly generate misinformation; and this can be very problematic leading up to the 2024 elections.
“In just 65 minutes and with basic prompting, ChatGPT produced 102 blog articles containing more than 17,000 words of disinformation” (DePeau-Wilson, 2023, para. 2).
NewsGuard is tracking AI-generated news and information websites that spread misinformation…to date, they’ve already found 725!
NOTE: “Bard” is now “Gemini.”
AI-generated misinformation is the world’s biggest short term threat!
Using Gemini to produce false or misleading information is not allowed, per the “Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy.”
Using ChatGPT to produce false or misleading information is not allowed, per the OpenAI Usage Policies.
Considerations for Educators
Help your students learn how to identify misinformation and combat the spread of misinformation…
Because, the ability “to discern what is and is not A.I.-generated will be one of the most important skills we learn in the 21st century” (Marie, 2024, para.3).
Resources:
Readings:
The AI Digital Divide
The Digital Divide
“There’s a major gap between people who can access and use digital technology and those who can’t. This is called the digital divide, and it’s getting worse as 3.7 billion people across the globe remain unconnected” (Connecting the Unconnected, 2024 para. 1).
There are different types of divides:
This article highlights a third type of gap - quality of use!
Usage divide
Usage varies depending on ethnicity and gender!
Usage Divide by academic performance level.
Searches for/interest in ChatGPT varied depending on geographic location, education level, economic status, and ethnicity!
While there are more than 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, generative AI large language models are often trained on just a few “standard” languages.
This creates a quality of use divide between those who speak the languages the AI tools were trained on and those who don’t.
This article focuses on the access divide.
Considerations for Educators
How might the digital divide affect your students?
How might you work to close the digital divide for your students?
How might your students work on closing the digital divide in their school? Community? State? Country?
Resources: