American High School Student Wins $23 Million Prize in Contest Using ChatGPT

Collecting Over 5,000 Articles for Analysis with ChatGPT

A high school student in the United States won a prize of $175,000 (about 230 million KRW) for analyzing news reports using ChatGPT at a science competition.

According to The Washington Post on the 15th (local time), Emily Ocasio, a high school student from Fairfax, Northern Virginia, used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT-3 to conduct social science research and won second place at the 'Regeneron Science Talent Search' on the 14th.

Emily Ocasio, a high school student from Fairfax City in Northern Virginia, USA, won second place in the Regeneron Science Talent Search on the 14th (local time) for her social science research using ChatGPT, receiving a prize of 230 million won.
[Photo by The Washington Post]

Ocasio used AI to analyze news coverage of homicide cases in the U.S. and identified a problem where media reporting tendencies varied depending on the perpetrator's race, gender, and age. According to her research, the media portrayed perpetrators more negatively if they were Black, female, or young. She collected FBI data on homicides that occurred in Massachusetts from 1976 to 1984 and over 5,000 articles, which she then had ChatGPT analyze.

The ChatGPT analysis showed that in media coverage of homicide cases, Black male perpetrators were 30% more likely to be reported maliciously compared to White male perpetrators. Additionally, Black female perpetrators were portrayed 23% more harshly than White female perpetrators.

A high school student in the United States won a prize of $175,000 (approximately 230 million KRW) for analyzing news reports using ChatGPT in a science competition.
[Image source=AP·Yonhap News]

In an interview with The Washington Post, Ocasio said, "Until now, I thought ChatGPT was mainly helpful for generating sentences, but I wanted to show that it can also be applied to text analysis." She added, "The core goal is to develop a new social science methodology that views text in a more efficient way."

Currently, Ocasio has been accepted to Harvard University, a prestigious university in the U.S., and is preparing to enroll.

Meanwhile, the Regeneron Science Talent Search is a U.S. science competition that discovers and supports the next generation of scientists. This year, more than 1,900 high school students from across the U.S. participated. Of the 1,900 students, only 40 advanced to the finals. Among them, Ocasio received high scores from the judges for applying ChatGPT to the social science field.