A large percentage of Israeli students use artificial intelligence applications on a regular basis, the results of a survey examining roughly 300 Israeli university students and their use of artificial intelligence found.
The study was conducted by Prof Gila Kurz and Dr Meital Amzaleg from the Faculty of Learning Technologies at Holon Institute of Technology
When carrying out the survey, researchers found that ChatGPT is the most popular artificial intelligence implementation among students, followed by Dall-E 2 by a large margin. They also discovered that:
- 53% of students reported using artificial intelligence applications.
- Among them, 66.5% use them occasionally during the week, meaning that 35.2% of students use artificial intelligence applications at least once a week.
- 33.5% of students use artificial intelligence applications every day.
What is ChatGPT?
The free artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was launched in late 2022, and quickly took the world by storm.
The chatbot was released to the general public for free, for now, as a prototype on November 30 by its creators, the OpenAI research lab, which already made Internet fame thanks to their development of the popular DALL-E AI art generator.
The program itself, however, is built on its predecessor, the InstructGPT chatbot. Its programming is rather sophisticated and it has undergone testing to make sure it is smart, efficient and won't produce harmful and deceitful responses.
What do students use AI for?
Most students reported using AI for help studying rather than actually writing academic papers. They also used it for finding inspiration for projects and editing writing assignments.
The data show that students use AI for writing papers, solving exercises, and creating visual products only very rarely and in smaller capacities. Additionally, they hardly use them for translation purposes.
What do these students think of AI?
- Students believe that artificial intelligence applications facilitate learning.
- Students believe that through the use of artificial intelligence applications, academic work can be done much more easily, and no one will be harmed if they use these applications. Additionally, they believe that instructors should allow the use of artificial intelligence.
- Students raise concerns that, as a result of development, instructors may provide less support for learning, and that academic work could become less valuable if it is completed using artificial intelligence applications.
Professor Gila Kurz, Dean of the Faculty of Learning Technologies at Holon Institute of Technology, said: "The AI revolution is already here. Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way we live and work, and higher education is no exception.
"The integration of AI in teaching and learning processes has the potential to create a revolution in the way students learn and teachers teach. Dealing with the complex challenge of integrating AI requires a comprehensive conceptual response, taking into account the various aspects of integration and their future development in a changing reality."
On March 9th, there will be an AI conference at the Holon Institute of Technology entitled "AI: Game Changer Or Game Over," at which the researchers will present their findings from this study.
Aaron Reich contributed to this report.