AI literacy in geographic education and research: Capabilities, caveats, and criticality

IF 3.6 3区社会学 Q1 GEOGRAPHY

Geographical Journal Pub Date : 2023-09-25 DOI:10.1111/geoj.12548

Robert L. Wilby, James Esson

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Concerns about runaway artificial intelligence (AI) – including large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT – are at the forefront of contemporary political, social, and scientific discourse. This commentary provides a first look at ChatGPT's capabilities and limitations in supporting geographic research, critical thinking, learning, and curriculum development. We assessed ChatGPT's geographic knowledge, synthesising abilities, and potential for extrapolation. ChatGPT was employed for writing assistance, research evaluation, curriculum material creation, and content generation. Despite achieving scores of 47% to 55% on an actual exam paper, ChatGPT exhibited shortcomings including the generation of false references. Ethical concerns regarding academic misconduct, model bias, robustness, and toxic output were also identified. We assert that AI and LLMs like ChatGPT have transformative potential in Geography education and knowledge production but demand critical usage. Accordingly, we urge geographers to enhance AI literacy to enable responsible and effective use of these assistive technologies in our academic practice.

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地理教育和研究中的人工智能素养：能力、注意事项和关键性

对人工智能（AI）--包括像 ChatGPT 这样的大型语言模型（LLM）--失控的担忧是当代政治、社会和科学讨论的前沿。本评论对 ChatGPT 在支持地理研究、批判性思维、学习和课程开发方面的能力和局限性进行了初步探讨。我们评估了 ChatGPT 的地理知识、综合能力和推断潜力。ChatGPT 被用于写作辅助、研究评估、课程材料创建和内容生成。尽管 ChatGPT 在实际试卷中取得了 47% 至 55% 的分数，但它还是表现出了一些缺点，包括生成错误的参考文献。此外，我们还发现了学术不端行为、模型偏差、稳健性和有毒输出等道德问题。我们认为，像 ChatGPT 这样的人工智能和 LLM 在地理教育和知识生产方面具有变革潜力，但需要严格使用。因此，我们敦促地理学家提高人工智能素养，以便在学术实践中负责任地、有效地使用这些辅助技术。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Geographical Journal GEOGRAPHY-

CiteScore

4.10

自引率

3.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Geographical Journal has been the academic journal of the Royal Geographical Society, under the terms of the Royal Charter, since 1893. It publishes papers from across the entire subject of geography, with particular reference to public debates, policy-orientated agendas.