ChatGPT is also, clearly, one of the most debated topics of recent months.
You can easily see this from the number of articles that Tech Princess dedicates to OpenAI’s conversational chatbot. Or how much generative artificial intelligence is talked about in various fields. Fortunately, even in Italian we can see the first volumes that frame the phenomenon with great clarity and without indulging in superficial catastrophic prophecies.
Ma Leaving aside the various qualitative analyses, what are the numbers of the chatbot? In short, what is ChatGPT traffic? Does the fact that software has entered our imagination so powerfully really reflect its widespread use, or not yet?
Certainly, there is a very interesting fact, which we will focus on in this article.
The Business Insider report
Business Insider, one of the most popular US business information sites in the world, periodically deals with ChatGPT traffic.
The title of one of his articles published on Tuesday 19 September is eloquent: “The summer is over, schools are back, and the data is in: ChatGPT is mainly a tool for cheating on homework.” Which, translated, sounds like this: “The summer is over, the schools are back and the data has arrived: ChatGPT is above all a tool for cheating on homework.”
Beyond the affectionately sarcastic title towards students, the message is clear: as schools reopened, traffic on ChatGPT increased.
ChatGPT traffic on the rise as schools reopen
Business Insider data speaks clearly: after a decline in the months of July and August, globally the ChatGPT site has returned to having peaks of over 400 million weekly visits.
Whether or not you want to accept Business Insider’s mischievous perspective, according to which the use of chatbots by students often has… less than legitimate purposes, there is certainly a strong correlation between the reopening of schools and the increase in access to the software.
The litmus test
In an article we published last July 18th we provided a sort of litmus test of the theory according to which there is a strong connection between access to ChatGPT and school.
In fact, traffic dropped quite dramatically throughout the month of July. It then suffered a further (but softer) decline at the beginning of August: in the first week the minimum number of views was reached, around 313 million per week.
Data from November 2022
Since the chatbot made its appearance (November 30, 2022), for the first few months – at least until March – the growth in accesses was constantuntil exceeding the figure of 1,600,000,000 monthly global visits.
After that, perhaps because the disruptive novelty effect wore off, the numbers increased again but in a less striking way. And we arrived in May, when we almost reached 2 billion monthly visits.
Precisely in May there was the first minimum decline, which proved to be decidedly more robust in the aforementioned summer months.
In contrast to Minecraft
Business Insider, which deliberately gives an ironic twist to its article, also included a… irreverent graph.
Which shows young people’s interest in recent months in Minecraft, “a popular video game that kids love to play when they’re not using ChatGPT to cheat on homework.”
Well: in the summer months, when ChatGPT traffic decreased, access to Minecraft definitely increased in the same but opposite way. Here too, it is difficult to think of a case: away from school, students have fun in their own way.
The fears
Aside from the joking tone, The Business Insider article is riddled with strong doubt. That students can use chatbots to deliver ready-made texts to teachers. On the other hand, passively relying on generative AI is what professionals in various fields have also done, often with disastrous results.
We reiterate here that AI is neither good nor bad. And if used with adult supervision, and even before that with one correct literacy of all the actors involved, it can also be an excellent ally for students of all levels. Who should also be taught a small but fundamental concept: cheating is not only useless, but in a possible showdown (such as a query on the same topic for which you passively relied on ChatGPT) it would backfire.