Tom Moriarty: The Chatbot Ate My Homework

AI chatbot ChatGPT’s ability to read and write like a person is disrupting the future of education. Some praise its potential to promote learning. Others see just another tool for cheating. Tom Moriarty has this satirical Perspective.

Tom from TomTech here. Back to tell you about TomTools for Education, the world’s first all-knowing, all-seeing suite of AI-enhanced apps from TomTech.

Kids: Are you tired of writing your own papers for school? Tired of explaining yet again that the earth revolves around the sun and Jane Austen is the best writer ever?

Why not try TomChat, the latest and greatest text generating app that writes papers that sound just like you? Simply type in a topic, the number of pages you need, and a couple of key words – words that only you would use, like “dude,” or “gnarly-liscous” – and press Enter. In under a minute, you’ll receive a fully polished paper that sounds remarkably like the one you would have written, if only you cared about your education.

Teachers: Are you tired of reading papers that sound suspiciously like your students suddenly care about your class?

Why not try InspectorTom, the world’s only TomChat identifying app, available exclusively from TomTech? InspectorTom can instantly spot TomChat-generated texts, using our proprietary Suspicion Engine. Just upload the paper in question, choose your level of suspicion — from “Hmmm … did this kid really write this?” to “No way this knucklehead wrote this paper!” — and press Enter. In less than two minutes, you’ll receive a detailed report on all your student rascals and the authenticity of their written work.

But wait, there’s more!

Kids: Call now and, for the low price of $22 a month, billed secretly to your parents’ credit card, you’ll receive a special upgraded version of TomChat — TomChatPlus — that can fool InspectorTom 97.8% of the time, guaranteed.

But wait, there’s even more!

Teachers: Call now, and, for the low, low price of $23 a month, you can upgrade to InspectorTomPlus, our machine learning-enhanced Suspicion Engine that can spot TomChatPlus a mile away. Or you can just make a deal with your uncaring students and let them buy their grades the old-fashioned way: by stapling a $20 bill to a blank sheet of paper.

With a Perspective, I’m Tom Moriarty.

Tom Moriarty teaches writing and rhetoric at San Jose State University.