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Generative AI has taken the world by storm. So much so that in the last several months, the technology has twice been a major feature on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” The rise of startling conversant chatbots such as ChatGPT has even prompted warnings of runaway technology from some luminary artificial intelligence (AI) experts. While the current state of generative AI is clearly impressive — perhaps dazzling would be a better adjective — it might be even further advanced than is generally understood.

This week, The New York Times reported that some researchers in the tech industry believe these systems have moved toward something that cannot be explained as a “stochastic parrot” — a system that simply mimics its underlying dataset. Instead, they are seeing “An AI system that is coming up with humanlike answers and ideas that weren’t programmed into it.” This observation comes from Microsoft and is based on responses to their prompts from OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

According to RollingStone, and other news outlets, a group of students at Texas A&M University-Commerce’s graduations is in question after being accused of using ChatGPT for their essays.

A Texas A&M University-Commerce professor has taken drastic action to fail all his students after suspecting them of using ChatGPT to write their papers. This decision has now delayed them from passing their diplomas. According to RollingStone, the professor, Dr. Jard Mumm, the decision appears flawed as he used the natural language processing software to analyze each essay and judge whether it generated it.


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“I copy and paste your responses in [ChatGPT], and [it] will tell me if the program generated the content,” the professor wrote in the email. He went on to say that he had tested each paper twice. Dr. Mumm then went on to offer the class a makeup assignment to avoid the failing grade — which could otherwise, in theory, threaten their graduation status.