How ChatGPT, artificial intelligence could change the future of education

BOSTON – During his appearance on the floor of the US House of Representatives, Congressman Jake Auchincloss made history not for the content of his speech, but for how it was written.

Auchincloss became the first Congressman to present a speech written by artificial intelligence. The speech formed through ChatGPT, allows users to enter themes, prompts, and guidelines and have the AI software formulate a response as if a human wrote it.

“They are not intelligence in the way humans conceive of it,” said Auchincloss in an interview before his speech on the House floor. “What these are, are models with more than a trillion parameters that predict the next word in a sentence or next pixel in an image. They are incredibly good at that and getting better. But they are prediction engines, they are not intelligence. They are tools.”

ChatGPT made headlines earlier this week when it was announced it passed a Wharton School of Business exam. It created conversations on the role AI will play in the future of education.

Venkat Srinivasan is a Co-Founder of Innospark Ventures, a first of its kind venture capital firm that solely invests in AI startups. Srinivasan has more than 30 years of experience studying and working in the AI space.

“AI to me is an enormous force for good,” said Srinivasan. He is the first to mention AI spaces like Chat GPT have a long way to go. The software is not always accurate and cannot be depended on.

But Srinivasan believes in its future. AI has the potential to change the way we view education. “We could reimagine learning,” Srinivasan said. “If we wanted sixth graders to double up thinking skills, we could prompt them sequential questions. We could examine the questions they are developing. You can even imagine a scenario where your test is not your answers but the series of questions you ask.”