As stated on my “about me” page, I am a graduating senior pursuing my Biochemistry degree. With biochemistry (as you can imagine) comes LOTS of math that can be very complicating and often takes blood, sweat, and tears to complete an upper-level chemical math problem- literally. Today, I wanted to talk about the benefits and liabilities of an up-and-coming digital technique we all know and love as current students- Chat GPT. Prior to Chat GPT, us biochemistry majors directly referred to pre-digital sources such as tutors, our professors, and our textbooks that can help us solve a complex math problem and allow us to conceptually understand it. This comes with some limitations from something we can explain as an “analog” perspective. Every tutor, textbook, and professor may complete this problem differently, getting you to the same correct answer. Although this can be resourceful, it can cause some confusion with which way to get to the answer that you consider “correct.” What is great about Chat GPT is that it will give you a step-by-step on how to reach a correct conclusion based on a complex math problem. This is awesome for us students! Providing this concrete step-by-step really helps us understand the way in which we should approach a problem with one equation and one set of steps. But… there is always a drawback- Chat GPT is unfortunately not great at the calculation part. Although the step-by-step tutorial on how to solve a problem has always been correct for my peers and I, we find that Chat is not so great at calculating that part for us. So, while the digital process of solving complex chemistry/mathematical problems is useful for that tutorial on how to get that answer, we must always know the liabilities of Chat GPT’s not-so-great math skills. Happy solving!
