15. chatGPT and essays

Much has been made of chatGPT's ability to write essays and the effect this is going to have on assessment. Rather than me giving examples here, the best way of seeing what it is capable of is to ask it to write a 1000 word essay in response to any past paper question.

As previously noted, chatGPT really isn't very good if a response requires detailed reference to the text and, at least in my experience so far, produces very poor essays on Descartes and Hume.

It does a bit better on some Kant and utilitarianism topics but, particularly in the latter, will give itself away by drawing on material that doesn't form part of the course. This might happen, for example, if you ask a questions like,

Write a 1000 word essay in response to the question:
'To what extent is Mill's version of utilitarianism an advance on Bentham's utilitarianism? '

Sometimes you can get more of what you want by not asking a single essay question but instead breaking it down and asking supplementary questions. For example:

Give a detailed description of what Mill meant by higher and lower pleasures.

Give an academic evaluation of this distinction.


These AI tools are not going to go away and they are only going to get better. Furthermore, pupils will be using them. It is too early to know exactly what impact they will have and what will have to change but maybe teaching students how to break down an essay title into smaller chunks and knowing what questions to ask, is itself an important skill. These are, of course, exactly the kinds of questions that students should have been asking themselves when setting out to write their own essays.

There are other ways chatGPT can be used in relation to essays — checking and marking.