ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, was launched at the end of November 2022 and quickly got popularity on social media. The number of registered users surpassed 1 million in just five days, and just two months later, this number had exceeded 100 million in five days, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. As Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates said, "The significance of this technology is no less than the birth of the Internet or personal computers." Elon Musk also commented that "The goodness of ChatGPT is even scary. We are not far from an AI that is powerful to an extent that it can be dangerous." ChatGPT was launched by the AI research laboratory of OpenAI, which was founded by the serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, Y Combinator’s President Altman, PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, and others in 2015, with the goal of creating "universal" robots and chatbots that can employ natural languages.

At the same time, during the two months when ChatGPT spiked in popularity, the entire education system seemed to be disrupted. Students exercised it so happily that teachers had no choice but to launch a counterattack against ChatGPT. For example, Antony Aumann, a professor of philosophy in Northern Michigan University, was pleasantly surprised while grading students’ papers for his course of World Religions, acclaiming that he had read the "best paper in the class." The paper discussed the ethical significance of the burqa ban in concise paragraphs with appropriate cases and rigorous arguments. However, the paper was written with ChatGPT. In the United States, many college professors, department heads, and administrators are making massive adjustments to classrooms to cope with the huge impact of ChatGPT. The State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of South Carolina at Furman both are planning to incorporate the discussion of AI tools into their compulsory courses related to academic integrity. Meanwhile, the University of Washington and the University of Vermont are starting to revise policies on academic integrity which will add "using generative AI" into the definition of plagiarism.

We should first have a look at what education is to understand the challenges that ChatGPT has brought to education. According to Encyclopedia of Baidu, “Education refers to organized education activities at school in a narrow sense, while in a broad sense, it refers to social practice activities that influence the physical and mental developments of individuals. “The Latin word "educare" represents the origin of terminology "education" in the western countries, it means "to introduce." “Education practitioners foster students’ mental development in a purposeful, planned, and organized way according to the laws, regulations and industrial standards, as well as the school’s conditions by using their existing experience and knowledge to explain various phenomena, problems and behaviors, so as to improve learners’ practice abilities. The core is to foster students’ ability to understand things with a relatively mature or rational way of thinking.” At the same time, education remains a process of imparting mindsets. As a result of their own ideological beliefs, people may retain an alternative way of thinking. Therefore, it should be objective and impartial when teaching students. Education is also a process which teaches students how to understand the others in an objective way, and develop one's own values based on his or her life experience. Education remains a practice activity which enhances people's comprehensive quality. Evidently, "existing," "objective, “and" imparting" constitute the core elements of the traditional education.

Meanwhile, it is noted that education has predominantly been understood as "school education," and ChatGPT’s impacts on teaching activities are mainly on school education. Why has ChatGPT caused such a significant impact on the teaching activities of school education, which has caused anxiety and even fear among educators? Generally speaking, traditional "school education" has its own model, which is primarily composed of three elements, i.e., "time, space, and ability." In other words, a group of students listen to the same teacher in the same place and at the same time for knowledge learning, explanation, training and so on. Obviously, this education is extremely limited by the elements of "time, space, and ability” for a student, which means that it must take place at the same time, in the same place, and with the same teacher. In order to reduce the limitations of "time, space and ability," many innovations have been made in the past education activities. For example, the courses delivered through radios and televisions changed the elements of "time and space," and MOOC changed "time and space" through the Internet. However, these educational innovations could not change the element of "ability”, which represents teachers’ ability. Obviously, through its deep learning, ChatGPT has exceeded the existing knowledge boundaries of nearly all teachers. Therefore, CharGPT has broken the limitation of “time, space and ability” with the educational ability it possesses and will inevitably change the current education model. It is foreseeable that the knowledge education based on repetitive, technical and conceptual memorizations will be replaced by intelligent education platforms based on ChatGPT in the near future.  

Then, in the world with artificial intelligence, is there still a part that could go beyond the constraints of "time, space and ability" for education? The answer is yes. It is the knowledge of the unknown world and the "knowledge" of knowledge itself. Therefore, the future education will need to focus on three aspects: 1) inspiring students’ desire to explore the unknown world, 2) exploring the knowledge of the unknown world together with students, and 3) training students to summarize and refine the acquired knowledge.

1.Inspiring students’ desire to explore the unknown world. There is a fundamental assumption that students have the desire to learn and they are "hungry for knowledge" in traditional education. However, in fact, we observe that many students lack the motivation to learn. They do not have the desire to make explorations. In light that ChatGPT will replace the  traditional education’s ability to "feed knowledge", it becomes necessary to change the  model of traditional education. However, there is a lack of scenarios, abilities and talents in China who can inspire students to explore the unknown world. Therefore, it is inevitable to carry out reforms on knowledge education in China to develop the necessary scenarios, training abilities, and talents for "inspiring students to explore the unknown world."

2.Inspiring students’ ability to explore the unknown world. Although ChatGPT may replace the traditional education in terms of feeding knowledge, there are still a lot of unknown worlds existed, which provides a broad space for exploration. Therefore, the second aspect that the traditional education needs to change is " to explore the knowledge of the unknown world together with students". Despite that the scenarios of "exploring the knowledge of the unknown world together with students” may exist in the current tertiary education, particularly in the process of doctoral education, these scenarios are over narrow and haven’t been spread broadly enough. We think it is necessary to develop knowledge by "exploring the unknown world together with students" in the future education, which allows students to explore the knowledge of the unknown world and allows them to consolidate their demands of knowledge The two aspects shall be complementary to each other.

3. Inspiring students’ wisdom to summarize and refine the acquired knowledge. Knowledge learning is a progressive process. Even for acquired knowledge, it needs a process which requires repetitive work and gradually deepened understanding. Although ChatGPT may replace traditional education's ability to feed knowledge, it still needs lots of education activities to teach students how to organize, refine and summarize the "acquired knowledge”. Therefore, the third aspect in the traditional education reform would be to "train students to summarize and refine acquired knowledge" to form a good logic of knowledge, as well as the relevant frameworks, maps and paradigms, so as to develop sound values. Only by this way can we form good logic frameworks of knowledge and reasonable paradigms for knowledge application, to form the “knowledge” of knowledge. It is obvious that this aspect requires guidance and trainings from “teachers”. Therefore, in the process of forming the “knowledge” of knowledge, it will become a new challenge to develop teachers who have in-depth understanding on acquired knowledge in the future.

In summary, the arrival of artificial intelligence will profoundly change the existing education model. We do not need to regard tools like "ChatGPT" as a monster, instead, we should embrace new things and new challenges with new education reforms to promote new progresses in education.

 ——Hang Wei，Professor, Associate Executive Dean College of Business, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics