According to a poll released on Wednesday, teenage students appear to be more inclined to utilize and hear about popular ChatGPT than their parents. Fifty-eight percent of surveyed students aged 12 to 18 said they had used the generative AI chatbot tool, while only 30 percent of surveyed parents of school-aged children responded similarly. In addition, while 54 percent of the students claimed they had heard “a lot” about ChatGPT, only 30 percent of parents said the same.
OpenAI’s popular generative AI chatbot tool, ChatGPT, was released in November and has since increased in popularity, especially among school-aged children, who are using it for school assignments without their parents’ or teachers’ permission. The poll revealed that 50 percent of students aged 12 to 18 have used ChatGPT for school and only 26 percent of parents knew about this. In fact, 38 percent of students admitted to using ChatGPT for a school assignment without their teachers’ permission, and 56 percent reported of knowing someone who has used the tool for school.
Despite the potential risks associated with ChatGPT, most parents and students view the tool positively. The majority of parents, 82 percent, and students, 85 percent, believe ChatGPT has the potential to benefit the world or cause harm, while 68 percent of parents and a whopping 85 percent of students argue that AI tools like ChatGPT will help kids learn. That being said, 61 percent of parents and 51 percent of students think schools should limit the use of AI programs to prevent any mishaps.
The survey was conducted by Impact Research between March 28 and April 9, involving 1,181 parents with children aged 5 to 18 enrolled in grades K through 12, and 300 students aged 12 to 18 enrolled in grades K through 12. The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points for the parent results and 5.7 percentage points for the student results.
OpenAI is a technology company founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever. It was founded in 2015 with the goal of making unsupervised machine learning possible, and research in areas such as natural language processing, computer vision, and generative models. To this end, the company has released many popular products, such as GPT-3, Grover, and ChatGPT. With OpenAI’s many advancements, AI technologies appear to be increasingly accessible to all types of users, including teenagers.
