Abstract
ChatGPT has emerged as a ubiquitous tool across various age groups in contemporary times. Its widespread adoption is evident as individuals continually engage with it throughout the day, employing diverse prompts and pushing the boundaries of its capabilities. This current research seeks to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of the general populace concerning their usage of ChatGPT in their daily lives. The researcher obtained secondary data from prominent social question-and-answer platforms, predominantly from Quora and Reddit, to achieve this objective. The research centred on three key research questions (RQ), using them as a foundation to uncover pertinent themes and corresponding quotes from users. Employing a convenient method, the researcher efficiently identified noteworthy user quotes, enriching the study with valuable insights.
TopResults And Discussion
Professor and Chair Dr. William Beeman from the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, commented in one question about the potential applications of ChatGPT in medical education and training of healthcare professionals. He said, “ChatGPT is like an automated Wikipedia search engine. It can pull up quick answers to questions and put the information in an acceptable narrative format. It is also unreliable, so it needs to be checked carefully if it is used at all. A lot of medical education involves memorization, so generating lists of bones in the foot might be reasonable. But if you ask ChatGPT “what are the best treatments for cancer? I wouldn’t trust the results at all.”. Several users are debating on Reddit: Why doesn’t education want ChatGPT? Some users argue that ChatGPT can make a student dumb while other users have counter argument to use the tool to learn new things fast. Another interesting topic on Reddit title as“ChatGPT Is a Plague Upon Education”, the users were discussing the use of paper and pen strategy by the professor in computer science. One of the users commented, “My final for a C programming class included writing out an entire program with pencil”. Some users are against the argument in using paper and pen strategy inside the classroom. I think the use of paper and pen strategy in a classroom to counter ChatGPT is subjective and depends upon the assessment's nature. There is no fixed rule in determining the rational use of ChatGPT or bringing back paper and pen inside the classroom. It depends upon the nature of the subject and assessment. Marketlurker, one active user in Reddit, has pointed out several issues with ChatGPT use. He called ChatGPT as “hallucinate”, “black box”, ”data poisoning or toxicity”(Alkaissi & McFarlane, 2023)(Chen et al., 2023)(Deshpande et al., 2023). Another interesting post inside Reddit titled “ChatGPT and Education” discusses the use of ChatGPT for writing Letters of recommendation and job references among users. Each research question has been addressed separately in Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 respectively.