Potential Societal Biases of ChatGPT in Higher Education: A Scoping Review
It addresses ethical AI concerns for higher education stakeholders but is incremental as it synthesizes existing literature without new data or methods.
The paper conducted a scoping review to examine how societal biases of generative AI like ChatGPT are researched in higher education, finding that most discussions are superficial and lack empirical evidence, with gaps in humanities and non-English contexts.
Purpose:Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) models, such as ChatGPT, may inherit or amplify societal biases due to their training on extensive datasets. With the increasing usage of GAI by students, faculty, and staff in higher education institutions (HEIs), it is urgent to examine the ethical issues and potential biases associated with these technologies. Design/Approach/Methods:This scoping review aims to elucidate how biases related to GAI in HEIs have been researched and discussed in recent academic publications. We categorized the potential societal biases that GAI might cause in the field of higher education. Our review includes articles written in English, Chinese, and Japanese across four main databases, focusing on GAI usage in higher education and bias. Findings:Our findings reveal that while there is meaningful scholarly discussion around bias and discrimination concerning LLMs in the AI field, most articles addressing higher education approach the issue superficially. Few articles identify specific types of bias under different circumstances, and there is a notable lack of empirical research. Most papers in our review focus primarily on educational and research fields related to medicine and engineering, with some addressing English education. However, there is almost no discussion regarding the humanities and social sciences. Additionally, a significant portion of the current discourse is in English and primarily addresses English-speaking contexts. Originality/Value:To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to summarize the potential societal biases in higher education. This review highlights the need for more in-depth studies and empirical work to understand the specific biases that GAI might introduce or amplify in educational settings, guiding the development of more ethical AI applications in higher education.