ChatGPT

19 Jan 2023

The new academic term is about to kick off. Here is what I have to say about #ChatGPT and friends

ChatGPT is a tool that can generate content, ranging from essays to computer software. It can also explain in natural language what code does. There are other tools like ChatGPT, and more will be developed. The following applies to all of them.

I am not naïve enough to believe that you don’t know about it, and that you won’t use it. I can make all the rules I want, or put in all the technical controls to block or detect it. They simply won’t work. These tools are here to stay, and they’ll only get better with time.

So, let me give some guidance:

Homework is meant to help you further develop the skills to think through a problem, analyze what is asked, design a solution, and execute that solution. It is a reinforcement activity meant to support what we cover during lessons. Homework is not about the final product. It is about how you got there.

Can ChatGPT solve your homework? Yes, it likely can.

None of the homework I assign is particularly original, so most solutions are probably easily findable via StackOverflow anyway.

Should you use ChatGPT to solve your homework?

Well. That depends.

First: all academic integrity rules apply. If you use ChatGPT, you must tell me.

Second: if you hand in a homework solution, you take ownership and accountability for it. If you cannot explain why you made decisions, or how you implemented certain constructs, you are likely not getting credit (best case). You might even end up in trouble for academic integrity violations (worst case).

Third: if your focus is exclusively is on the final deliverables, you don’t learn. If you don’t learn, your tuition is wasted, and you’ll fail the sit-down written exams anyway.

If you want to use ChatGPT to support your learning by having it give you examples or explaining stuff, or if you want to use it to verify your answers, go ahead and do so. Tell me about it! I am genuinely interested in how it works out for you.

One final word of caution: like anything on the Internet, ChatGPT makes mistakes. Don’t blindly accept what it tells you as the truth. When in doubt, my opinion about the validity or the truth of a statement matters more than what some internet-based thing says.

This article was also posted to Mastodon. Find the post here.

A Teaching Case: A Seminar Course in Accessible Computing

07 Oct 2022

EDSIGCON is the annual conference of the Information Systems & Computing Education Special Interest Group.

Robet Siegfried and I were happy to learn that our paper titled A Teaching Case: A Seminar Course in Accessible Computing was accepted for presentation at the conference. The paper has now been published in the conference proceedings and it is also available here.

Interviewed for News12 Long Island

05 Oct 2022

Rachel Yonkunas of News12 Long Island stopped by my office for a chat about email scams.

Some of the chat was recorded and made it into the news segment.

While none of the points I made were rocket science, it is always fun to be given the opportunity to step out into public view :-)

Also: I’m glad I shaved that day ;)

Interviewed for Newsday

27 Mar 2022

I was interviewed earlier this week for Newsday, a local Long Island newspaper. The topic of our conversation was increased cyber-attacks against local school districts and the prevalence of ransomware outbreaks.

The articl migh be behind a paywall, but it is here.

Supporting Cyber Threat Analysis With Service-Oriented Enterprise Modeling

12 Jul 2021

SECRYPT 2021 is the 18th International Conference on Security and Cryptography and it took place last week.

Sung Kim and I were happy to learn that our paper titled Supporting Cyber Threat Analysis With Service-Oriented Enterprise was accepted for presentation at the conference. The paper has now been published in the conference proceedings and it is also available here.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was held virtually this year. Our presentation is available on YouTube.