How do I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay ?
How do I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay ?
ChatGPT could also refer to any other large language model Artificial Intelligence (AI) system.
Underneath this question are a couple of other questions:
Am I allowed to use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
Should I use chat GPT to write my ToK Essay?
Let’s take these in the following order:
Am I allowed to use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
How do I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
Should I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
Those last two are very inter-related, and we’ll probably deal with them together.
Am I allowed to use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay ?
On March 15th 2023 International Baccalaureate updated their Academic Integrity Policy to say:
AI generated text, image or graphs must be credited & referenced just like any other secondary source.
Students should be encouraged to ask [AI] software research questions rather than the essay title.
So, yes - you are allowed to use AI software (such as ChatGPT) as long as you credit it. And you are encouraged to ask AI research questions. Now, we have questions, or prompts, that you can ask AI about each ToK Essay available from TokToday - these prompts are designed to give you content which is specific to your essay.
OK, now we know that you are allowed to use ChatGPT, let’s consider how you should use it to write your ToK Essay.
How do I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
To understand how to use ChatGPT it’s helpful to understand a little about what ChatGPT actually is. It’s called a Large Language Model (LLM), this means that it studies the frequencies of words occurring together in written text, and from this it is able to predict the word that is most likely to come next in a sentence. As such, it doesn’t actually know anything. It’s just selecting words that are most likely to follow each other in response to the question (or prompt) that you ask it.
You know more ToK than it does, but it can draw on a wider information base than you to help you to develop your knowledge.
So - the question / prompt that you ask it is super important to ensure that you get specific and relevant content for your essay. If you just cut & paste the essay question into its prompt box it will give you a very generalised response, with lots of vague and non-relevant content.
You need to work out your knowledge arguments beforehand, and ask questions directly about the knowledge arguments, or you can even ask ChatGPT to give you the knowledge arguments. Let’s look at an example from May 2023 session. We’ll use essay #5 May 23: are visual representations helpful in the communication of knowledge in human sciences & maths ?
Rather than directly ask that whole question we break it down, and we use the responses of the AI to build our argument. So, let’s start with the question: "Give me an example from Economics when using a visual representation is better than a written description".
From this example you can see that it has given me the example of a supply and demand curve, and it has explained the advantage that “A written description of the relationship between supply and demand can be difficult to understand this involves multiple variables and complex interactions over visual representation such as a graph can make the relationship much clearer and easier to comprehend.” Now in this passage we have the core of an evaluation point for the use of visual representations in Economics (as a Human Science). We would need to develop this advantage of visual representations using ToK concepts or terminology, but we have the beginnings there.
Now, we come to the advantage of AI such as ChatGPT over old search engines. AI remembers what you have already asked it, it’s like you’re have a conversation with it, so we can now ask it: “what are the disadvantages of explaining the law of supply and demand using a graph rather than using a written description ?”
Here you can see that it has given us 4 disadvantages of using visual representations, each point could be developed into an evaluation point to be used in either AoK Human Sciences or AoK Mathematics for this essay. Points 2-4 are very rich seams for ToK, and are substantial enough to develop as the whole evaluatory side of the essay - you would just need to use ToK concepts, and real life situation, but tbh you could get ChatGpt are the disadvantages of explaining the law of supply and demand using a graph rather than using a written description ?POT to do that for you as well.
Notice, that rather then just put the whole essay question into ChatGPTs search bar I started by asking it a specific question, and then the next specific question that I asked it built on the response from the first question, I could have continued to do this. This is the 2 part rule for getting relevant and specific content from AI:
(i) Start with a specific question.
(ii) follow up with specific questions based on the AI’s response from earlier in the conversation.
As I mentioned earlier we have questions, or prompts, that you can ask AI about each ToK Essay available from TokToday - these prompts are designed to give you content which is specific to your essay.
Should I use ChatGPT to write my ToK Essay?
Maybe you should use ChatGPT to write your essay, but there are a few issues to take into account. Essentially, it’s contextual, like everything in life. I would say there are 2 big (inter-related) factors in whether you should use ChatGPT to write your essay:
(i) the information it gives may not be accurate (nor relevant, nor specific enough).
(ii) it may be more work to use it than not to use it.
(iii) Your own personal development
Can you trust Ai when writing your ToK Essay?
Remember AI doesn’t actually know anything, it just places words in order based on a predictive algorithm. So, it may give you biased, or even false information, if that’s how the algorithm interprets the word frequencies that it’s finding on the net. For example I recently asked ChatGPT to summarise a specific philosophical argument in the empiricism vs rationalism debate. The philosophical argument I was asking about concerned corroboration of experience, It gave me 300 words on the value of curiosity. Its response had very little to do with the argument that I was asking it to summarise, it was only vaguely connected. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t studied this debate at university, read some articles on JSTOR etc.
Check carefully !
And there’s the first problem - you need to check everything that ChatGPT tells you - you need to check it for biases and inaccuracies. Some of that checking can be done using general Google searches, but some of it will require the use of academic journals such as those found in JSTOR.
And that checking may be more work than just using those traditional academic research sources to begin with. Just start with JSTOR, and use your own selection skills to decide what to include, because your going to have to do this anyway after using ChatGPT.
Is it more work to use Ai to write my ToK Essay ?
This neatly brings us to our second problem which is that ChatGPT may be work to use than not to use:
Not only do you have to check all of the content that it gives you but you also have to adapt any content that is inaccurate, and you have to cite any content that it gives you. So, it can give you factually inaccurate & incorrect information - this has OFTEN happened when I’ve asked it to give me specific academic research on a particular subject, and the other day it even made up a fallacy - a fallacious fallacy so to speak. So, if you find that it has given you inaccurate information you have to adapt the information - which takes time.
Finally, you have to cite it’s content just like any other secondary content (eg Wikipedia). If you get caught pretending that AI content is your own you could be excluded from the DP. The AI plagiarism checkers are getting far better. I have been testing GPTZero and I am yet to fool it, it always correctly identifies content from ChatGPT, and differentiates it from content that I have written myself.
Summary - how to use ChatGPT to write ToK Essay
So, in summary - ChatGPT can be great for giving us ideas for the essay, and for further research. However, relying upon it too much could create more work than just taking its ideas and developing them in the conventional traditional academic fashion (using your own intelligence).
Prompts, or questions, for artificial intelligence specific to each ToK Essay can be picked up from this link.
For those of you who are taking a more traditional route to writing the ToK Essay detailed essay guidance notes for each ToK Essay, and lots of support can be picked up from this link
