NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. - The Westminster College Speech and Debate organization, advised by Dr. Randy Richardson, recently hosted an event in continuation with their “The Great Debate” series, which was created to highlight the importance of civilized and reasoned debate in public discourse The idea was conceived during a discussion between Dr. Kathy Brittain Richardson, the President of Westminster College, and Dr. Brendan Kelly, the President of University of West Georgia. The series started last spring semester on UWG's campus, with teams from both schools debating the impact of social media on democracy.

Westminster College’s Speech and Debate Society is a student organization open to all, and designed to enhance students' public speaking skills while offering experiences for intercollegiate forensic competitions. “The Great Debate” brought students, professors, and various faculty members alike to extend an ear to the discussion and debate of an issue that has quickly become crucial to the forefront of education: generative AI, and its role in the classroom. 

The issue of generative AI, specifically in its manifestation through student-accessible programs such as ChatGPT, has been an increasingly divisive issue throughout the last few years, specifically as students have now been able to utilize those programs to aid them in their work, and of course, often use it to cheat. This evident offshoot of generative AI has stirred unrest in educators, professors, and students as our esteemed academic institutions -- and in many ways, our society -- attempts to grapple with the capacities and capabilities of its software. As such, it is widely accepted and rather undoubted that currently, the bounds of generative AI -- at least for now -- expand beyond our society’s parameters for control, in several facets. It’s also, for better or for worse, now entrenched into our society as an accessible asset. However, in these assertions, another, more crucial question remains: do generative AI’s capacities for merit, convenience, assistance outweigh the inability to control it? In simpler words, is AI, qualitatively, a help or a hindrance to our academia, and in a broader sense, to the current constructs of our society? 

Westminster students opened the debate, arguing the affirmative, as in: generative AI and programs such as ChatGPT are overarchingly, generally good things, and help academic institutions, professors and students much more than they hinder them. For example, large numbers of college-level students indicate that while they may have questions as to class material, they fear interrupting class and asking a question of the professor in front of their peers, which of course, subsequently means that many students simply do not ask for clarification when they need it. However, in asking a question of ChatGPT or any such platform, the affirmative argued that these students -- who are clearly in need of further tutelage, or direction -- can easily ask these very same questions or concerns with absolutely no fear of rejection, or anxiety, which arguably, allows them to access their learning on a far deeper, interactive level than before. Of course, concessions were made to the obvious usage of ChatGPT for academically dishonest purposes, and also, to the current ineptitude of our laws, systems, and procedures to fully anticipate and monitor generative AI. 

However, in the views of the affirmative, these contemporary issues are actually momentary, and this process of trial and error is actually the manner in which society adapts to any new, revolutionary technology. For example, while utilizing the free, basic-level version of ChatGPT to write essays was sadly, somewhat commonplace after the creation of the service back in 2022, academic similarity detection services -- trained to catch plagiarism in any form -- have modified, adapted, grown to catch students in doing this. Subsequently, academic institutions and professors have also learned and developed the intuition, skills, and procedures to gradually grow more accurate in catching the dishonest, unfavorable student usages of generative AI. The affirmative argues that these changes and growths within our societal institutions (and among people!) are not only good, but actually, even preferred. While it is evident that the parameters by which to catch, detect, and monitor the full capabilities of generative AI are in no way perfected, this steady process of improvement is necessary for the acclimation of revolutionary technology, and in a larger sense, imperative to the general growth of our society. 

The opposition stance was taken up by the University of West Georgia, who argued that qualitatively, generative AI exists as more profound hindrance, and that whatever help it proffers pales in comparison to the threats that it can impose on scholastic institutions, academic honesty, and even to the competence and creativity of human minds. The opposition brought attention to the vast amount of plagiarism, cheating, and seemingly apathetic behaviors towards academia that generative AI has allotted and allowed to grow. The argument is that, in utilizing the help of AI services and their vast, inhuman recollections of information, humans will become increasingly less motivated to accomplish time-consuming, challenging tasks in academia -- or otherwise -- if there is a machine that is believed to do it better, faster, and effortlessly. In the viewpoint of the opposition, human creativity, intellect, and input is integral to the formation of society; it is the very thing that fuels the sciences, the arts, and the entire painstaking process of discovery. Subsequently, the stance is that if that generative AI is allowed to grow and amass in the significant manner that it has so far, that human motivation towards expedition, learning, and enlightenment will flicker until it entirely fades --- eventually leaving behind a merely mechanic perversion of society and human originality. For this reason, for the unprecedented, rapid growth of generative AI, and for the currently inability of our government, academic institutions, and society to fully understand and monitor this technology, does the opposition argue that qualitatively, generative AI exists as hindrance, much more than it could ever be of help. 

Considering the genuinely unprecedented nature of generative AI and the discussion around it, “The Great Debate” served as an intellectually stimulating, genuinely thought-provoking dialogue of the things that matter most to us, as a society. Though it is clear that disagreements can and will occur as to the merit of generative AI -- and a number of other controversial topics -- it is profoundly clear that we argue to work towards the same, collective goal: the best possible development of our emerging, ever-growing society.