New study says ChatGPT makes weak writers perform closer to more proficient ones

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A new study has found that OpenAI's ChatGPT improves output from weak writers and brings it closer to the quality of work from more proficient ones.

Conducted by Whitney Zhang and Shakked Noy, economic PhD students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the study enlisted volunteers from various fields, including marketers, grant writers and college-educated professionals.

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As reported by Nature.com, After an initial assignment where they were told to write press releases, short reports and other texts, half of the participants were told to register for ChatGPT and incorporate it into their workflows.

There was a noticeable boost in quality in performers, who scored low in the initial assignment. Regardless of scoring high or low, all of the participants finished the task much faster with ChatGPT assistance than before.

The group had an average of 27 minutes for the first assignment, which dropped to 12 minutes with AI chabot's assistance.

“This could potentially mean that, in the longer run, we could see reductions in inequality as performance is equalised across different skill groups,” Zhang said in an interview with the publication.

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Anton Korinek, an economist at The Brookings Institution said that ChatGPT could help address the inequality in the labour market but cautioned that "white-collar workers, who have great writing skills" were "suddenly becoming devalued".

While the bot increased the quality output of weaker writers, it did little to help the better ones. Participants did not heavily edit or modify the text from the chatbot and small changes did not increase or decrease the score of better writers.