Turn off your brain, turn on ChatGPT

The satirical post from Writer Pocket was shared on Instagram several weeks ago and had got over 159,000 likes and 896 comments when I read it.

The warning was meant to be humorous, but it has clearly made many people, including those in the education industry like me, think.

I started working in the IT field in 2012 and became a professional teacher in 2021. My experience in education and human development has gained a multi-dimensional and innovative perspective thanks to technology, especially since the launch of ChatGPT.

Rarely has any application set a record like ChatGPT did, garnering one million users just five days of launch.

According to Similarweb statistics, as of December 2024 there were more than 3.7 billion visits on average to ChatGPT per month, each lasting 6 minutes and 25 seconds.

A man using ChatGPT on a laptop. Illustration photo by Pexels/Matheus Bertelli

At first teachers opposed the use of GenAI (generative artificial intelligence). Using GenAI for homework was considered plagiarism. The international university where I work uses software to find out which essays used AI and what percentage, and penalties are imposed on students based on this.

But after only a few months of adaptation, the use of AI was normalized by many international schools, and we even encouraged students to experience new technologies more often to equip themselves with digital skills.

At one school where I teach, students are regularly allowed to use AI to re-edit the language written by them to improve the quality of the assignment, not to create new content.

However, this adaptation is not enough.

In the past two semesters I have read hundreds of papers bearing the hallmarks of ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek.

Generic prompts like "Give me an innovative business idea for the final assignment of Business Creation & Innovation" are given and cloned answers are copied and pasted everywhere.

Instead of using AI as our intelligent virtual assistants, we are witnessing a generation of copy-paste machines that stop thinking deeply. "Turn off your brain, turn on ChatGPT" seems to be the new mantra.

I asked ChatGPT about its weaknesses, and the application answered frankly: If ChatGPT were a student, it would be someone who always raises their hand to answer questions but only gets a passing grade.

According to ChatGPT's own admission, it has some basic errors including: One is fabricating information - sometimes ChatGPT makes up facts or cites unreal sources but still sounds very convincing due to its ability to infer based on many data sources (including unverified data) and make quick guesses.

Its second weakness is not having real-time knowledge and limited access to some reputable reports or websites, and the third is not understanding deep contexts - even though it can remember every conversation in a chat session, ChatGPT can still forget to calculate important details.

So what should schools change to help future generations escape dependence on AI?

Firstly, schools need to supplement basic learning content to form new habits, including learning methods and scientific research using AI, and ethics and human attitudes in the AI era.

Learning methods are basic knowledge, and changing this content to suit the later development stage of GenAI should be a priority for educators when adjusting the program content. Meanwhile, ethics and human attitudes in the AI era is an issue that is no less important than code of conduct, a subject that is part of training at major organizations around the world.

These contents need to be taught at the beginning of each semester to orient students' thinking and attitudes, and repeated and controlled to ensure that new habits are formed in the community.

Next is to change the way classes are organized and assessed.

Instead of essays and reports, move them to projects that require presentations, debates between student groups or between students and lecturers, create evaluation boards and increase oral exams.

The third point, which is equally important, is to develop the capacity of teachers. Teachers at all levels also need to put aside their pride and ego to explore and delve deeper into GenAI.

In particular, educators need to be aware of the levels of prompting skills (writing commands for AI) and try to improve this skill to level 3 or higher (level 1 being prompt explorer, level 2 prompt crafter, level 3 prompt designer, level 4 prompt strategist, and level 5 prompt architect).

Thanks to that, when reviewing students' answers or writings, teachers can quickly detect which way of thinking is AI's and which way of thinking is their students'.

Students today do not lack tools but may lack confidence in themselves and proper guidance from adults.

*Haley Phan, or Phan Thanh Hai, is an expert in technology and education. She is teaching entrepreneurship and marketing at several schools in Vietnam.