Cited by 574Artificial Intelligence in EducationEthics and Social Impacts of AIArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 26 of the 26 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 18 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

ChatGPT and large language models in academia: opportunities and challenges

Open access

Abstract

The introduction of large language models (LLMs) that allow iterative “chat” in late 2022 is a paradigm shift that enables generation of text often indistinguishable from that written by humans. LLM-based chatbots have immense potential to improve academic work efficiency, but the ethical implications of their fair use and inherent bias must be considered. In this editorial, we discuss this technology from the academic’s perspective with regard to its limitations and utility for academic writing, education, and programming. We end with our stance with regard to using LLMs and chatbots in academia, which is summarized as (1) we must find ways to effectively use them, (2) their use does not constitute plagiarism (although they may produce plagiarized text), (3) we must quantify their bias, (4) users must be cautious of their poor accuracy, and (5) the future is bright for their application to research and as an academic tool.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This editorial argues that LLM-based chatbots such as ChatGPT should be embraced in academia for writing, education, and programming, while cautioning about bias, hallucination, and poor accuracy. The authors conclude that LLM use does not constitute plagiarism, that bias metrics are needed, and that users remain responsible for validating outputs.

Key findings

The authors’ stance is that (1) LLMs must be embraced, (2) their use does not constitute plagiarism although they may produce plagiarized text, (3) their bias must be quantified, (4) users must be cautious of poor accuracy, and (5) the future is bright for their application to research and as an academic tool.

  • ChatGPT can present false information as truth: when asked to help find relevant publications to cite, it “proceeded to make up a list of five entirely fictional publications”; on repeat trials it sometimes listed one or two real papers, but other times fabricated a paper or returned an irrelevant one.
  • On scalability and accessibility, the paper reports ChatGPT gained 100 million active users in 2 months, with an estimated 13 million daily queries, compared with Google search’s estimated 8.5 billion daily queries; ChatGPT offers a free tier and a $20/month premium plan. It also notes BLOOM as an open access 176B parameter multilingual LLM, ChatGPT as a 175 billion parameter LLM, speculation that OpenAI had access to 10,000 Nvidia V100s costing close to $5 million, and an estimate that training BERT (described as a 6 billion parameter LLM) would produce 21 to 78 metric tons of CO2.
  • For academic writing, LLMs may particularly help non-native English speakers; the paper cites that 49% of postdoctoral fellows trained in the United States were born overseas, and in engineering, math, and computer science, 60% of PhDs were awarded to international students. For programming, ChatGPT can help write, interpret, debug, simplify, and translate code, but it may present incorrect code as correct, miss edge cases, and is more reliable for smaller blocks than larger complex programs.

Methods

Design: editorial/commentary, not an empirical study or systematic review.

  • Data or sample: no primary data; the paper draws on published literature, illustrative examples, and the authors’ experiences.
  • Main analysis: narrative discussion of opportunities and challenges across academic writing, education, programming, bias, and scalability/accessibility.

Limitations

The paper does not report a formal limitations section for its own approach. Evident from the text: it is an editorial/commentary, so its examples are illustrative and include personal experiences rather than systematic evidence.

  • The paper states LLM limitations: hallucination/false information, bias from training data, poor accuracy, misrepresentation of capabilities, and inability to anticipate edge cases in code.
  • The paper notes unresolved ethical/legal uncertainty around LLM use in academic writing and grants, and that detection of cheating remains an unsolved challenge for educators.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/s13040-023-00339-9

Cites

26 of 26 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

17 Own interpretation · 9 Not checked yet · 7 No basis given · 4 Own result

Verify all 18 references — free account

Show all 10 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 23
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 11
27 of 27
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Effective academic writing is essential to the success and quality of academic publications and is a major challenge facing international postdocs and students.

    “Effective academic writing plays an essential role in the success and quality of academic publications, nevertheless, it is one of the major challenges facing international postdocs and students.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The current grant review system is subjective; some proposals scored very poorly in one study section while nearly the same proposal at another study section is funded.

    “Despite this massive investment, the current review system is subjective; for example, some proposals sent to one study section are scored very poorly, while nearly the same proposal at another study section is funded.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    ChatGPT has already been applied to help write grant proposals.

    “ChatGPT has undoubtedly already been applied to help write grant proposals.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    ChatGPT is a 175 billion parameter LLM.

    “As a reminder, ChatGPT is a 175 billion parameter LLM and this only considers the cost of training and not any cost related to generating text in response to potentially billions of daily queries.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The output of ChatGPT is from most publicly available text on the internet until 2021.

    “The output of ChatGPT is from most publicly available text on the internet until 2021.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    ChatGPT is known to perpetuate stereotypes such as nurses being female and doctors being male, and this bias comes from the training data.

    “For example, ChatGPT is known to perpetuate stereotypes such as nurses being female and doctors being male, and this bias comes from the training data.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The use of ChatGPT and other LLMs by students is inevitable.

    “As the use of ChatGPT and other LLMs by students is inevitable, educators will need to change the pedagogy and assessments in education, such as integrating the use of ChatGPT in lessons [26], and a focus more on the process rather than the final product for assessment.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Detection of cheaters remains an unsolved challenge for educators.

    “While the detection of cheaters remains an unsolved challenge for educators, if we start from the assumption that students are allowed, if not encouraged, to utilize ChatGPT, strategies could be adopted to account for this.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    It is difficult to define metrics that assess the level of bias in training data and model outputs.

    “It is difficult to define metrics that assess the level of bias in the training data and in the model outputs.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    AI has the potential to revolutionize education and academic research.

    “While AI has the potential to revolutionize education and academic research, paywalled access could further increase the divide between the wealthy and the poor.”
10 of 10

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. Kung TH, Cheatham M, Medenilla A, Sillos C, De Leon L, et al. Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE: Potential for AI-assisted medical education using large language models. PLOS Digital Health. 2023;2(2):e0000198. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pdig.0000198. · DOI · Paper page
  2. Shidiq M. The use of artificial intelligence-based chat-gpt and its challenges for the world of education; from the viewpoint of the development of creative writing skills. Proc Int Conf Educ Soc Humanity. 2023;1(1):353–7. ISSN 2986-5832.
  3. Trust T, Whalen J, Mouza C. Editorial: ChatGPT: Challenges, opportunities, and implications for teacher education. Contemp Issues Technol Teacher Educ. 2023;23(1):1–23.
  4. Dijkstra R, Genç Z, Kayal S, Kamps J. Reading Comprehension Quiz Generation using Generative Pre-trained Transformers. 2022.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 574

Metadata

Authors
Meyer, J. G., Urbanowicz, R. J., Martin, P. C. N., O’Connor, K., Li, R., Peng, P.-C., Bright, T. J., Tatonetti, N., Won, K. J., Gonzalez-Hernandez, G., & Moore, J. H.
Affiliations
  • Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (US)
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
Corresponding author
  • Meyer, Jesse G.
  • Moore, Jason H.
Venue
BioData Mining
Published
2023-07-13
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
20-20
ISSN
1756-0381 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4384200891
Cited by
569
References
23
Citations by year
2026: 104 · 2025: 215 · 2024: 220 · 2023: 29
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • BioData Mining (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • National Institute on Aging (AG066833)
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35GM142502)
  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI164481)
  • U.S. National Library of Medicine (R01LM011176)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Education › Artificial Intelligence in Education
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
Keywords
large language models, ChatGPT, academic writing, artificial intelligence in education, AI-assisted programming, plagiarism, algorithmic bias, AI accuracy, research tools, ethics of AI use

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-09, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-09 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review