ChatGPT isn’t smart, your tests are stupid

This post is five phrases long including this one.

  • If regurgitating lightly rephrased Internet texts in response to questions is enough to pass your exams then your educational system is already broken.
  • If regurgitating lightly rephrased new or previously published papers counts to you as doing scientific research then the science you were doing was already useless.
  • If regurgitating lightly rephrased Internet texts in response to prompts is a workable substitute for the things you are writing, publishing, or reading, what does this say about what you are bringing to the table or looking for?

Confusing the impressive achievement in computational linguistics that is ChatGPT with an equivalent advance, or even a step forward, in any other field betrays a deep confusion between linguistic performativity and effective skill that oscillates between being unable to tell the difference, uninterested in trying, or incapable of conceiving that there might be one.