Teachers are lining up for a ChatGPT detector created by this 22-year-old in Toronto
As awe-struck Internet users obsessed over the wondrous abilities of ChatGPT, a 22-year-old in Toronto was feverishly crafting a tool to detect its misuse.
“ChatGPT is an incredibly cool innovation,” Edward Tian told CTV News Toronto.
“But it’s like opening a Pandora's Box.”
He would know. The Etobicoke native is a computer science major at Princeton University and spent the last couple years studying GPT-3, artificial intelligence that produces human-like text, just like ChatGPT.
The interactive chatbot is powered by machine learning. ChatGPT essentially swallowed massive swaths of the Internet, learning language patterns in the process that it can recreate in response to a human prompt.
As ChatGPT landed in the hands of the public in late November, Tian played around with the technology alongside friends. They asked the program to write poems and raps.“Wow this is really good,” Tian remembers thinking. “This is better than something I could write myself.”
That high-level of skill was raising alarm bells for educators, who began fearing that their students would hand in essays generated by a machine and they would have no way of knowing or confirming suspicions. Immediately, Tian became aware of this too.
“Everyone deserves to know the truth and everyone deserves a tool at their fingertips that can determine whether something is human or machine generated,” he said.
Luckily, he had time on his hands during winter break and sat down at a coffee shop in Etobicoke to do something about it. The result: GPTZero, an app that can decipher whether something was written by a machine or human.
First, a user copy and pastes text into the app. An evaluation begins, measuring the perplexity, creativity and variability of the writing. Then, GPTZero delivers a score, which leads to a result: either the text was generated by ChatGPT or a human.
On Jan. 3, the app went public. More than 300,000 people tried it and over 7 million people viewed it on Twitter.
“It was totally crazy. I was expecting a few dozen people,” Tian said
In particular, teachers were noticing GPTZero worked in detecting if their students were writing their papers, or not. Now, Tian is building a tool specifically designed for educators. Already, 33,000 teachers have signed up on the product waitlist.
“No one wants to be deceived if something they are reading is misrepresented as human,” Tian said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Amid concerns over 'collateral damage' Trudeau, Freeland defend capital gains tax change
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Bodies found by U.S. authorities searching for missing B.C. kayakers
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
Tom Mulcair: Park littered with trash after 'pilot project' is perfect symbol of Trudeau governance
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
'It's discriminatory': Individuals refused entry to Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
Competition bureau finds 'substantial' anti-competitive effects with proposed Bunge-Viterra merger
The proposed merger of agricultural giants Viterra and Bunge is raising competition concerns from the federal government.
Douglas DC-4 plane with 2 people on board crashes into river outside Fairbanks, Alaska
A Douglas C-54 Skymaster airplane crashed into the Tanana River near Fairbanks on Tuesday, Alaska State Troopers said.
BREAKING Mounties will not be charged in shooting death of B.C. Indigenous man
Three Mounties in British Columbia will not face charges in the killing of a 38-year-old Indigenous man on Vancouver Island in 2021.
College students, inmates and a nun: A unique book club meets at one of America's largest jails
An unconventional book club inside one of America's largest jails brings college students and inmates together to tackle books that resonate with the mostly Black and Latino group members.
Canada's favourite sport to watch is hockey, survey shows
The 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs have already delivered a fever level of fan excitement in Canada.