Academic Writing with GPT-3.5: Reflections on Practices, Efficacy and Transparency

Abstract

The debate around the use of GPT-3.5 has been a popular topic among academics since the release of ChatGPT. Whilst some have argued for the advantages of GPT-3.5 in enhancing academic writing, others have raised concerns such as plagiarism, the spread of false information, and ecological issues. The need for finding ways to use GPT-3.5 models transparently has been voiced, and suggestions have been made on social media as to how to use GPT-3.5 models in a smart way. Nevertheless, to date, there is a lack of literature which clearly outlines how to use GPT-3.5 models in academic writing, how effective they are, and how to use them transparently. To address this, I conducted a personal experience experiment with GPT-3.5, specifically by using text-davinci-003 model of OpenAI, for writing this article. I identified five ways of using GPT-3.5: Chunk Stylist, Bullet-to-Paragraph, Talk Textualizer, Research Buddy, and Polisher. I reflected on their efficacy, and commented on their potential impact on writing ethics. Additionally, I provided a comprehensive document which shows the prompts I used, results I got from GPT-3.5, the final edits and visually compares those by showing the differences in percentage.