Since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in late 2022, showcasing the startling capabilities and power of artificial intelligence (AI), there has been a surge in the number of sophisticated language models — like Google’s Bard, Meta’s Llama and Anthropic’s Claude. These technologies have captured both the attention and scrutiny of higher-education institutions. As the COVID-19 pandemic recently shook conventional ways of instruction, the education system is seeing yet another disruption: Generative artificial intelligence.
Large Language Models (LLMs), such as GPT, which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer model,” are trained on large amounts of textual data. They operate by predicting the probability of a word occurring within a longer sequence of words, achieved through the breakdown of text into smaller parts known as “tokens.” Notably, GPT-3, trained on an extensive dataset of 500 billion tokens, represents a significant milestone in AI advancement. A study conducted in January 2023 involving 1,000 students in the US found that 89 per cent have used ChatGPT to help with homework assignments, and the latest available data indicates that it currently boasts an impressive user base of over 180 million users, underscoring its growing influence on education.
Amid this technological change and the increasing usage of—and reliance on—generative AI among students, the question for McGill’s academic community is becoming clear: How can we proactively harness the potential of AI while addressing the concerns it poses in such a way that it benefits the higher education community at McGill as a whole?