ChatGPT: The New Chegg
December 13, 2024
Chegg is an education outfit. The firm has faced some magnetic interference related to its academic compass. An outfit in Australia has suggested that Chegg makes it possible for a student to obtain some assistance in order to complete certain work. Beyond Search knew AI would displace some workers and maybe even shutter some companies. But it is hard to find sympathy for this particular victim. “Chegg Is on Its Last Legs After ChatGPT Sent Its Stock Down 99%,” reports Gizmodo. So industrial scale cheating kills rich-kid cheating. Oh no.
Those of us who got our college degrees last century may not be familiar with Chegg. Writer Thomas Maxwell explains:
“[Chegg] started out in the 2000s renting out textbooks and later expanded into online study guides, and eventually into a platform with pre-written answers to common homework questions. Unfortunately, the launch of ChatGPT all but annihilated Chegg’s business model. The company for years paid thousands of contractors to write answers to questions across every major subject, which is quite a labor intensive process—and there’s no guarantee they will even have the answer to your question. ChatGPT, on the other hand, has ingested pretty much the entire internet and has likely seen any history question you might throw at it.”
Yep. The Wall Street Journal reports Chegg put off developing its own AI tools because of machine learning’s propensity for wrong answers. And rightly so. Maxwell suggests the firm might be able to make that case to “curious” students, but we agree that would be a long shot at this point. If Chegg does indeed go under, we will not mourn. But what other businesses, and the workers they support, will be next to fall?
Does the US smart software sector care if their products help students appear smarter and more diligent than they are in real life? Nope. Success in the US is, like much of the high-technology hoo-hah, creating a story and selling illusion. School education is collateral damage.
Cynthia Murrell, December 13, 2024
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