Since the very dawn of time, students have sought new and creative ways to pass their exams that uh, do not include just studying.

People have hidden scraps of paper inside their pens, written down answers on their forearms, transcribed ancient Chinese texts onto underwear…

“pls stop” — every teacher throughout history

Even now, there is a disturbing number of articles on WikiHow about cheating, namely 10 Ways To Cheat on a Test Using Body Parts and even 3 Ways to Cheat on a Test Using Pens or Pencils… (WikiHow, why do you have so many of these????)

…And the list goes on!

Now, it’s no secret that it’s very possible to cheat with ChatGPT and that this has thrown educators worldwide for a loop, but then I received a rather funny question earlier on the Artificial Intelligence Megathread that I started on Lowyat.net.

Well.

Could you potentially write a Masters thesis with ChatGPT?

It so happened that someone on the ChatGPT Malaysia Facebook group had asked about the same thing, so I thought ok, let’s make it happen.

Anyway, I was curious about whether it was actually possible, so I decided to give it a go.

Here’s what I asked:

Okay, so at the very least the software proposed a bunch of topics that seemed kind of plausible and interesting.

Anyway, since I’m involved in the education industry and AI – based learning is very interesting to me, I decided to ask ChatGPT to follow up on #7, as follows:

Okay, wow! I had sources too! This was getting interesting! But then…

I looked at this, and I was captivated: Was I on my way to get a Master’s degree for this man?

No, wait. Wasn’t this even better? Wasn’t this thing essentially describing the process of creating a personalized new education technology company for me???

I set out in earnest, yearning to go where no man had ever gone before!

Okay, seemed great so far! I ran out of words, though, so I asked ChatGPT to continue:

Okay, uh…

Do you see what I’m seeing here?

Rather than actually writing the thesis, ChatGPT was malingering — it was casually not doing what it was told to do, and presenting me with some nonsense summary!

That won’t do! You think just because you’re an AI assistant you get to be lazy?!

I asked it to continue, and provide results in detail.

For about five, this seemed really really plausible, so I was happy again…

For about five minutes, before my skepticism began again.

…So I checked the references, only to realize that they mostly couldn’t be found anywhere.

Okay, I was thinking to myself.

This is a wonderful software, I declared, trying to beat back the cognitive dissonance.

Surely the third page will be a little bit better? So I thought.

At this point, I realized – ChatGPT had failed.

The two methodology sections contradicted themselves, and there wasn’t a possibility of reconciliation unless I proceeded to prompt chatGPT with the specific information that it actually needed, which I decided not to because the rewarded yielded by that effort would actually be better spent writing the thesis if I actually had a clear idea of how to do so.

So, how do we answer our research question?

With a solid no.

  1. As you can see, there’s a word limit for responses, which means that you will have to re-prompt ChatGPT, which is likely going to lead it to drift from the original prompt.
  2. ChatGPT’s memory for prior responses is about 4000 tokens (words) and it will not completely remember everything that you told it before unless say, you intelligently summarize.
  3. There is no guarantee that the logic or factuality of your piece will be valid or that even any of the sources that you cite will be accessible or even relevant to what you are writing about, as you see from the questionable sources.

Sorry to those of you out there hoping that ChatGPT was going to help you get your Master’s degree, but it’s not gonna happen right now.

Even if you can though, should you? I guess that’s up to each person to decide, but what I would say is that submitting something AI generated for a degree means that you didn’t get the degree — the AI did and got certified and you did not.

Let me not moralize this or romanticize education, but approach the matter in a logical way — when this starts to happen on a large scale, if it does happen, I can imagine that companies or other institutions that used to take these degrees seriously will simply no longer take them seriously, thereby causing degrees as a whole to become about as worthless as MOOCS among prominent companies (i.e. companies that actually generate large amounts of business and have a vested interest in hiring actually talented people) and leading to what we already see, to a degree, in institutions such as tech companies and start-ups… Whereby many of these companies don’t pay the most attention to the particular degree that you received, but rather whether you are capable of demonstrating the specific skills that they are looking for and communicating your perspective in the course of an interview in which there is no opportunity to make use of AI software.

How will artificial intelligence change not just education, but also the job market at large?

We’ll be finding out, and we’re going to be in for a wild, wild ride!

I’ll have lots more to say about this in the days ahead, so if you would like to read about the intersections between AI, writing, and education, do consider dropping me a follow and I’ll see you in my next pieces!

— V

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

A Small Written Piece… About Writing.

I write insane amounts nowadays – it’s because my brain has started moving so quickly that now writing thoughts down has become a natural occurrence, almost like breathing air or drinking water. Just think about it. Sepupunomics. EnglishFirstLanguage. My YouTube channel. Scripts. Descriptions. Essays. Posts. Everything. How is it possible to handle all of that unless your brain is indeed accelerating insanely? Or maybe, there’s an alternate explanation – maybe I just feel like my brain is moving faster, and the reality is that I just now have a thicker skin and mere human opinions don’t concern me, if we can say that. I suppose that in itself is interesting, because it reshapes human behavior — If you don’t really care that much what people are going to think of you, you’re not likely to be very restrained when it comes to writing, talking, yapping, and feeling yourself through this glorious and strange array of words.  The net result?  You practice, you practice, and you practice far more than other people.  Even as we speak now, I am confident that the sheer number of words that I have written trespasses beyond what is reasonable, normal, or even understandable for most human beings, and I continue to write every single day. How many of these words will actually be read by people? Who’s to say, who’s to know, who’s to care? This is just an expression of who I am – so as water is wet, the Earth rotates, and gravity exists, I will write, and so move forward as who I am, a letter and a keystroke at a time. 

Malaysian Prime Minister Tier List

It is quite normal for people to talk about politicians, and coffee shop talk is an everyday thing in our beautiful Tanah Tercinta – but I for one think coffee shop talk alone would be a little too boring… Which is why rather than just engaging in coffee shop talk, I thought it would be interesting to grade them. Which is why just the other day, my friends Vinodh and MJ from The Good Cast Show and FIRL did a new fancy collab – it’s a Prime Minister Tier List, and I’m very happy to share it with you! It was a great conversation with some very knowledgeable people (let me not include myself in that, and I’ll let you assess that for yourself!) who had also interviewed me before (for their respective podcasts), it was an awesome vibe of a chat, and it was an honor to learn with and from you! Come (virtually) hang out, and see you there! Also, I’m conducting a live poll (ends in six days!) for all of us to decide on an all-time ranking of our Malaysian Prime Ministers – join the fun and vote here! Link: https://live.tiermaker.com/63128277

No, ChatGPT is NOT making you stupid.

Sepupus, the internet has been abuzz of late because of a new MIT study called “Your Brain on ChatGPT”. All around on Reddit and the internet, people are starting to form wild conclusions, read patterns in the stars, decide unilaterally or with the agreement of some people out there and everywhere, that somehow now people are being made stupid and MIT researchers have said that it is so and therefore it must be true. I find it interesting and fascinating. Now, in what way is this related to economics if at all? Well, artificial intelligence is a very important part of our economy and it will continue to be important for the foreseeable future, as it shapes and reshapes the economy and how we treat human capital in ways that are intuitive and sometimes unintuitive, in ways more subtle and interesting than the standard narrative of robots replacing human beings may suggest. It’s interesting to think about it and how it’s going to affect the way that we can live and work in this world which is ever-changing and continually evolving. With that in mind, here’s my perspective. I do not generally think that ChatGPT is making us stupid. I read the MIT study earlier, and I broadly understand the way that it is constructed. You can have a look at it here. Link: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872 Basically, what they did was that they asked participants to write SAT-style essays across three sessions chosen from a range of choices in three different groups: 1. One purely using their brains 2. One using Google 3. One using ChatGPT Then, they had some participants come back for a fourth session where they swapped people from one group to another — 18 people did this in total. Now this is what ChatGPT says, in summarizing what happened: (AI generated – also, as a full disclosure, I do […]

Harvard Derangement Syndrome

We all know the difficulties that Harvard has been going through, and I thought that it would be fun to showcase an actual Harvard perspective, so I’m sharing this free article from the New York Times to all of you written by Steven Pinker, from my own subscription.  It is well worth reading, and I hope you will enjoy it if you choose to read it!  Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/opinion/harvard-university-trump-administration.html?rsrc=ss&unlocked_article_code=1.KE8.FQW2.LxEovGin6Ef6&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Pinker is a disarming man. If you read his articles, they are quirky yet intellectually engaging. The man stuffs so many different facts into a single paragraph that it often makes me wonder how or whether he just has access to all of the ideas he does, articulating within a single hand wave expressions and fires of the most deeply interconnected set of neurons I may have ever witnessed on the planet.  Well, at least that’s what I feel having read Pinker for quite a number of years now – And not knowing that he was the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Well, that’s just a lack of attention to detail on my part, but it’s an interesting reality Sometimes people may have done or know far more than you might even think, perceive, or understand And sometimes these surprises can be rather fascinating.  Read the essay and it will give you a picture of what I understand about elite universities in the US at this point – Not exactly woke madrasas or the very headquarters of the CCP as President Trump seems to suggest, but instead as something rather different, definitely vibrant albeit with its flaws, where strident opinions are often shared, becoming the very voice of a generation through nothing more than the saliency bias and social media even amid an admitted climate where certain ideas are put to rest not because they are bad ones, but instead because […]

Royal Society Interview

Very honored to have the chance to interview the very first Malaysian scientist to join Britain’s Royal Society soon. Looking forward to meeting you soon, Ms. Ravigadevi! What questions should I ask and what are you curious about? Let me know down in the comments!

PKR Deputy Presidency Election Results Analysis

Some of you who follow me on YouTube know that I’ve been conducting some coverage of the PKR Deputy President elections featuring former deputy President Rafizi Ramli, and incoming deputy President Nurul Izzah. Sometimes it’s good to take a moment to think about the events that have happened over the course of the past, to understand things a little deeper, so I decided to do an analysis of the election results, which I’m sure many Malaysians were following. It is my first time doing this, and I will share my thought process along the way. When I look at the vote totals and also who got how many votes, I realize that we have been told earlier that there were about 32,030 people who were eligible to vote. Yet, at the same time, when we added together the votes cast for Rafizi and also Nurul Izzah, the total was only 13,669. This was a 42.7% turnout. Now, this was significantly better compared to previous PKR elections during which the turnouts ranged from about 10–15%. But thinking about that made me realize something important: Firstly, Nurul Izzah only has about 30% of the vote and she does not have a strong mandate. Second of all, this system made it so that what we see seems to be a highly improbable result. Now, some of you may know that PKR recently moved over to a delegate system. The way that it works is that there are 220 divisions of PKR and they all select a certain number of delegates to end up making up the total pool of people who are eligible to vote. In other words, this is not a random sample – This is not the general population. Indeed, if it were, and we were dealing with just your average everyday social media poll, it is almost a foregone conclusion that […]