Explore and talk about ChatGPT with your kids!

By: Dabney Ingram, Ph.D. and Dana Tuttle, M.D.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now available to the masses, and young people (especially teens) are eagerly exploring and taking advantage of it. ChatGPT – an AI program that responds in-detail to text prompts on demand – is the tip of the iceberg, with other tech giants nipping at its heels (e.g., Google’s ‘Bard’ and Microsoft Bing’s chatbot).

Local middle and high school students we’ve talked to are exploring ChatGPT for homework help, essay writing and editing, to find answers to their questions, and to play around (e.g., generating silly poems and parody Taylor Swift songs with their own name in the lyrics). 

Adults we’ve talked to are using ChatGPT to draft work emails for them, to synthesize complex information, to edit or expand their draft writing, to generate ideas, and in place of their typical search engine (i.e., to find concise responses without “all the noise of search engines” and scrolling through websites). 

We’re also hearing that families are using ChatGPT to help with:  travel planning (What trains run from Paris to London?), cooking support (What can I cook with rice, chicken, broccoli and pantry basics?), free time inspiration (What can someone build with magna-tiles?), and even parenting advice (How do I motivate a lazy teenager?). 

Explore and talk about ChatGPT with your kids!  Like all tech, there are upsides and downsides to navigate, especially for young developing minds that benefit from the “friction” of the learning process. Together with your child, set some basic guidelines for how to appropriately use ChatGPT.  Below we offer some starter points to get you going on this important topic!

Ways to explore this new tech

1) Explore ChatGPT on your own: https://chat.openai.com/chat

If you haven't already, you’ll need to make an account, and then you can jump in and get a preliminary understanding of this AI tool.  Ask it to write an essay about the history of your hometown, or to write a haiku poem about your favorite sport!

2) See what your child already knows. Approach this topic with sincere curiosity and ask your child, what have you heard about ChatGPT? Have you tried it?  Get them talking about it and sharing what they’ve heard or experienced.

3) Dig into ChatGPT with your child.  Spend some time together discovering this generative AI technology.  Explain that it’s a powerful tool that synthesizes information from the Internet. While exploring:

  • Queries to consider:  What do you think ChatGPT is best used for?  What do you think we need to be cautious about? How do we interpret and evaluate digital information generated by AI, especially since its sources are not cited?  And whose perspective and biases is ChatGPT presenting? 

  • Show your child that you're savvy enough to know ChatGPT can write an essay for them. A sample prompt could be, “write an essay about the gains and losses of the American Revolutionary War.”  After evaluating ChatGPT’s response together, consider a discussion about how you hope their own learning and growth isn't hindered by AI. Topics could include:  the purpose of homework, the importance of doing their own work, the benefits of process over outcome, and how the uncomfortable “friction” of starting an essay is an essential part of their learning process. This is a good time to talk about how important the following skills are for your child to develop:  critical thinking, developing their own ideas and voice, resilience, and integrity.

Set clear expectations for use

Here are *examples* of parameters and talking points to use with your child or to modify as you see fit:
✓ You may use ChatGPT as you might use Google or YouTube - to research a topic, ask questions, or get ideas. Consider ChatGPT as one perspective among many that you might explore and interpret with a critical eye. ChatGPT is occasionally factually incorrect and it does not list its sources, so its content must be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism and be fact-checked.  It’s also currently limited to information and events through 2021.

✓ If you use ChatGPT as a source to inform an essay, make sure to cite it as you would any other sources. Currently, sharing the prompt used to generate ChatGPT information is the suggested way to cite it.

✓ You may NOT use ChatGPT to write your essay for you - that is cheating and unfair to yourself and disrespectful to your teacher. 

✓ You may NOT copy and paste text written by ChatGPT without quoting and citing it - that is plagiarism.  FYI, your teacher can copy and paste your essay back into ChatGPT and ask whether ChatGPT wrote it.

✓ You may NOT use ChatGPT to do your homework for you - that’s detrimental to your own learning process.

✓ Do NOT overuse ChatGPT. You need to learn and practice how to think and develop ideas for yourself to become a strong communicator and innovator.

If you suspect your child has plagiarized text from ChatGPT, ask them directly about it.  Follow up with a conversation to understand why they might have used ChatGTP inappropriately - do they understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it? Did they hit a roadblock that could be navigated in other ways? Were they unmotivated by the assignment?  Remind them of your parameters for AI use.

AI-created art is here too! Here is the iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon, taken by Neil Armstrong on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, reimagined in the style of Van Gogh's "Starry Night."  NightCafe Creator

Want to dig deeper?

In sum, explore ChatGPT on your own, with your kids, and - most importantly - talk about it!

Dabney Ingram, Ph.D. and Dana Tuttle, M.D. are co-directors of the nonprofit, ScreenSense, whose mission is to help families and their communities teach healthy tech use to young people.  Every 3 weeks they email their subscribers “One Step Towards Healthy Tech Use” which breaks down the work of supporting digital wellness into bite-size actionable pieces - sign up here to receive “One Step” for free!

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