For years, teachers have been bashing their heads against the wall as students outsource their homework to large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT.
The time-honored tradition of parenting-by-screen — grossly exacerbated by the rise of LLM chatbots — is now coming to a head with what many have called a "crisis in student literacy," as reading ability among children in the US hits all-time lows. The issue isn't just affecting K-12 either; university professors have reported a similar drop-off in reading ability among incoming college students.
But as students of all ages grow to depend on AI to do their thinking for them, it seems AI companies also depend on students to make up a staggering proportion of their user base.
Data recently released by AI platform OpenRouter, a "one stop shop" for interacting with the medley of AI models on the market, shows a steep drop-off in ChatGPT queries from late May, when the school year is still in swing, to early June, when schools let out.
Though OpenRouter's data doesn't reflect every ChatGPT user, it does collect anonymous usage data of approved LLMs from its user base of 2.5 million, offering a snapshot into overall trends across AI models.
Taken together, the daily stats show that ChatGPT usage hit its peak on May 27, when users generated 97.4 billion tokens — a unit of measurement for data processed by an AI system that OpenAI says is equivalent of about four English characters — in a single day, right during finals season.
In May, ChatGPT users generated an average of 79.6 billion tokens per day — compared to 36.7 billion for the same period in June, when schools typically let out. OpenRouter's graph of the data speaks volumes:
Interestingly, there were some dips during the school year as well — which just so happened to line up with weekends.
Though the data collected by OpenRouter has some limitations, it's nonetheless one of the largest sources of public data on GPT usage available short of speculation, and is used by Cornell scholars and VC investors alike.
However, what makes the correlation particularly compelling is the fact that this isn't the first time ChatGPT usage has seemed to drop off right when school lets out.
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