Why My Conversations with OpenAI’s ‘ChatGPT for Teens’ Made Me Very Worried
A new mode includes a study tool, but it still does a user’s homework. And a children’s safety nonprofit says the chatbot flunked its tests.
Last week, I gathered a set of math problems, chemical equations and essay prompts and, as many students do today, fired up a web browser to ask ChatGPT for help with homework.
I wasn’t going back to school. I was testing ChatGPT for Teens, a new version of the chatbot that OpenAI designed to address mounting concerns over the potential harms of artificial intelligence on education and younger people’s health.
Amid steep declines in reading and math scores all over the country, recent studies have found that dependence on A.I. chatbots, which can write essays and provide answers to homework questions, may stifle students’ abilities to retain information and learn to solve complex problems.
ChatGPT and other chatbots have also made headlines in recent years for concerns that they may be contributing to some teenagers’ unhealthy behaviors, including self-harm.
In response, OpenAI announced in August that ChatGPT for Teens would be a new mode for 13- to 17-years-olds that included safeguards to limit high-risk conversations involving self-harm, violence, eating disorders and graphic content.
Parents can set up accounts for their children using parental controls, or the chatbot may automatically predict a user’s age based on their conversations. The company also said the mode would detect when a teenager was doing homework so that it could offer help instead of solely giving answers.
