As with all new technology, people will have different levels of ability and access. So, in terms of teaching and learning, are all students afforded the same access?
ChatGPT versus ChatGPT Plus
There are currently different levels of access to most generative AI tools. The question is: if a student cannot afford the paid version, are they placed at an educational disadvantage? For reference, as of August 8, 2023, a ChatGPT Plus monthly subscription is $20 USD/Month.
At the moment, OpenAI indicates that its free and paid versions of ChatGPT provide similar quality answers to the same question. It specifies that there is no difference in the length of conversation one can have with ChatGPT between the free and paid versions. However, it does laud GPT-4 (only available with ChatGPT Plus) as being able to more complex tasks, such as:
- Advanced reasoning
- Complex instructions
- Improved creativity
When supplied with a question from a computer science third-year final exam, the free version returned a partially correct and slightly simplistic answer, whereas the paid version returned a completely correct answer providing nuanced reasoning.
ChatGPT’s paid model has some known advantages over the free version. Including:
- Response times: This is predominantly for situations of heavy load. The difference would be in seconds or minutes, instead of hours.
- Availability: The paid version has better availability across different geographical locations. During periods of high demand, access to the free version of ChatGPT is limited, while a ChatGPT Plus subscription “offers availability even when demand is high.” This could mean that students might be blocked from using the free version of ChatGPT and unable to complete an assignment on time.
- Plugins and Features: New features are constantly being added to the paid model – including a new web-browsing feature – that may widen the gap between the free and paid versions. ChatGPT Plus supports plugins and features that the free service does not, for example:
- Wolfram plugin: Provides access to powerful computation, accurate math, curated knowledge, real-time data and visualization through Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Language.
- Code interpreter: An experimental ChatGPT model that can use Python, can handle uploads and downloads in a sandboxed, firewalled execution environment, along with some ephemeral disk space. The code run by the plugin is evaluated in a persistent session that is alive for the duration of a chat conversation.
- GPT-4: The latest ChatGPT Large Language Model.
Not everyone has an account
Interacting with ChatGPT and similar tools requires the creation of individual accounts. There is no UBC-wide account, and there is no way for students to interact through Canvas, the library or other UBC services.
Some students may not want to create an individual account.
Intermittently, ChatGPT account creation pauses, and it may require multiple attempts to acquire login credentials.
If you are asking your students to use these tools in your course, you should remain aware of whether they have accounts or if they are having trouble creating one, or even reasons not to.
Things keep changing
We will keep updating here as things change.