In late November of 2022, ChatGPT was released to the public as a free research preview. Students quickly realized ChatGPT was pretty good at doing their homework for them. Schools scrambled to figure out what to do:  Ban it? Embrace it? Teachers and students found themselves adapting to a new reality. 

Buckle Up, Here it Comes kicks off “The Homework Machine” a mini series in the Teachlab podcast. Hosts Jesse Dukes and Justin Reich share stories of teachers and students reacting to the arrival of an exciting, alarming, and strange new technology. 

Producer: Jesse Dukes

Editors: Ruxandra Guidi and Alexandra Salomon.

Reporting and research: Holly McDede, Natasha Esteves, Andrew Meriwether, and Chris Bagg. 

Sound design and music supervision: Steven Jackson. 

Data analysis: Manee Ngozi Nnamani and Manasa Kudumu. 

Special thanks to Josh Sheldon, Camila Lee, Liz Hutner, and Eric Klopfer. 

Administrative support from Jessica Rondon. 

The research and reporting you heard in this episode was supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Kapor Foundation, the Jameel World Education Lab, the Social and Ethical Responsibility of Computing initiative at MIT, and the RAISE initiative, Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education also at MIT. 

Additional support from Google’s Academic Research Awards program. 
InTandem facilitated some of our student interviews. 

Full episode transcript.