GPT-3 can generate a plausible student essay from a short prompt, including a heading and citation, on its first attempt¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q1
Currency · newest study 2022 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2025: tool and model accuracy changes quickly

Subclaims¶

q1 i? GPT-3, given the prompt 'The construct of "learning styles" is problematic because', generated the rest of a coherent short essay including heading and citation on the first attempt. → Mike Sharples 2022

Evidence¶

Mike Sharples 2022¶

Mike Sharples. (2022). Automated Essay Writing: An AIED Opinion. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00300-7

q1 · i? · theoretical · r2

A demonstration by the author: GPT-3 produced a short essay critiquing learning styles from a one-sentence prompt, generating heading and citation. The author notes it is "correctly spelled, with good sentence construction" and presents a coherent argument.

"The entire essay was written by GPT-3, a Transformer AI program. It was given the prompt “The construct of ‘learning styles’ is problematic because” and it generated the rest, including heading and citation. The text shown here is the first attempt."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• GPT-3 fabricates plausible-looking but fake references and apparently invents the research studies they cite — related
• GPT-3 can generate a complete short academic paper, including abstract, introduction, discussion and APA references, in under five minutes — a broader claim this one bears on
• Most of the article's body text was generated by ChatGPT from author prompts, and all references ChatGPT inserted were fictional — related