Researchers discovered college students to have fared higher at accounting exams than ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot product.
Despite this, they stated that ChatGPT’s efficiency was “impressive” and that it was a “game changer that will change the way everyone teaches and learns – for the better.” The researchers from Brigham Young University (BYU), US, and 186 different universities needed to know the way OpenAI‘s expertise would fare on accounting exams. They have revealed their findings within the journal Issues in Accounting Education.
In the researchers’ accounting examination, college students scored an total common of 76.7 p.c, in comparison with ChatGPT’s rating of 47.4 p.c.
While in 11.3 p.c of the questions, ChatGPT was discovered to attain increased than the scholar common, doing significantly properly on accounting info techniques (AIS) and auditing, the AI bot was discovered to carry out worse on tax, monetary, and managerial assessments. Researchers suppose this might presumably be as a result of ChatGPT struggled with the mathematical processes required for the latter sort.
The AI bot, which makes use of machine studying to generate pure language textual content, was additional discovered to do higher on true/false questions (68.7 p.c right) and multiple-choice questions (59.5 p.c), however struggled with short-answer questions (between 28.7 and 39.1 p.c).
In normal, the researchers stated that higher-order questions had been tougher for ChatGPT to reply. In truth, generally ChatGPT was discovered to supply authoritative written descriptions for incorrect solutions, or reply the identical query other ways.
They additionally discovered that ChatGPT usually supplied explanations for its solutions, even when they had been incorrect. Other instances, it went on to pick the improper multiple-choice reply, regardless of offering correct descriptions.
Researchers importantly famous that ChatGPT generally made up information. For instance, when offering a reference, it generated a real-looking reference that was utterly fabricated. The work and generally the authors didn’t even exist.
The bot was seen to additionally make nonsensical mathematical errors akin to including two numbers in a subtraction downside, or dividing numbers incorrectly.
Wanting so as to add to the extreme ongoing debate about how how fashions like ChatGPT ought to issue into training, lead examine writer David Wood, a BYU professor of accounting, determined to recruit as many professors as doable to see how the AI fared in opposition to precise college accounting college students.
His co-author recruiting pitch on social media exploded: 327 co-authors from 186 academic establishments in 14 nations participated within the analysis, contributing 25,181 classroom accounting examination questions.
They additionally recruited undergraduate BYU college students to feed one other 2,268 textbook check financial institution inquiries to ChatGPT. The questions lined AIS, auditing, monetary accounting, managerial accounting and tax, and assorted in problem and sort (true/false, a number of alternative, quick reply).
