ChatGPT is offering its Pro subscription for free to university students until May 31. Students will have free access to advanced features like GPT-4 and OpenAI o1.
AI programs like ChatGPT can be a useful study tool for students. In a survey from the Digital Education Council, 86% of students use AI to study, with 54% using AI on a weekly basis.
Students at Utah Tech University are allowed to use AI as a study aid according to official policies laid out in every course syllabus. UT policy recognizes the opportunities for innovation within AI, but states it cannot be used by students to submit plagiarized work.
“Generative artificial intelligence (AI) and associated technologies (e.g, ChatGPT, Perplexity, DALL-E2, etc.) have already brought to our campus significant opportunities for innovation in teaching and research along with concerns around the ethics of their implementation and utilization,” the policy said.
Alex Cutler, a senior software engineering major from St. George, works as a tutor who specializes in helping students use AI tools like ChatGPT responsibly.
“My advice would be don’t use it [AI] to do a whole final paper, but do use it to review rough drafts and peer reviews,” Cutler said. “AI will be helpful reviewing specific sections or a basic rundown of how a draft is looking.”
Miles Kindred, a junior marketing major from Layton, said he frequently uses AI as a study tool and has already signed up for the Pro subscription with ChatGPT. He uses the bot to make practice tests for exams.
“I’ll say ‘OK Chat, put something on the study guide that will help me solve this equation’ and I’ll keep having ChatGPT make me a study guide until I can take the test and just use the notes it gave me,” Kindred said.
Course policies also state that students may not use generative AI to submit as their own work, or else AI checkers will flag the submission and the student will have to meet with the instructor.
AI detection programs like GPTZero, Winston AI and AI Detector Pro will scan a piece of text and look for characteristics specific to AI writing styles. It flags things like a lack of consistency and coherence, human touch/creativity, and a lack of inconsistencies that show up in human writing.
Concerns about the use of AI detection tools to flag work worry some students on campus. The detection tools are imperfect at picking up AI work every time.
Cameron Dearing, a freshman general studies major from Ogden, said he has had some negative experiences with AI detectors in his courses.
“I plugged in my essay into a software that would read it back to me so I could listen to it, and I repasted it into the submission, so I had to go in and talk to her [my professor],” Dearing said. “It got flagged as 100% AI.”
AI tools can be used to complement the learning done in a classroom setting without replacing it.
Students who are interested in redeeming OpenAI’s offer of a free Pro subscription should be aware of how to use AI software as a tool that aligns with UT’s official policies. This will help them use it responsibly for studying this finals season.
