Academics & Research Campus Faculty & Staff News Tech

Navigating AI: Students face accusations, adaptation

Jose Gonzalez-Campelos/The Cougar

Artificial Intelligence has expanded rapidly in recent years, sparking debates about its impact on different industries. 

After the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, the concerns regarding AI have grown, with educators around the world expressing their worries regarding AI’s potential to enable dishonestly. 

Academic dishonesty is a constant concern due to students taking advantage of AI to complete assignments.

In response, many professors have become stricter on checking plagiarism and have implemented new rules limiting the percentage of AI allowed on an assignment, most commonly on essays.

However, the strictness and the apprehension of professors attempting to detect AI usage has caused students to feel uneasy when turning in work. 

“I have been accused several times of using AI and this affected me,” said strategic communications junior Erik Garza. “I had to constantly worry and address these accusations with the professors to prove my innocence.” 

AI checkers are not foolproof and often come with warnings stating their limitations. 

Upon the release of Turitin, the company explained the strengths and weaknesses of the checker claiming it will make mistakes and give false positives. 

“We lack the appropriate technology to detect whether or not a student has used assistive AI in their assignments,” said director of outreach and education initiatives for human centered AI Josh Kaisen. “I would recommend that educators hold off on such accusations.”

Instead, educators should rebuff their existing assignments to make it harder to score well using AI. Educators could raise standards in cases where generative AI is particularly useful or focus on creating assignments where generative AI is of little use, Dr. Kaizen said.

Despite these recommendations, students report increased anxiety about being wrongfully accused of using AI. 

“AI is a result of the internet and many people’s own words and ideas. Of course it will sometimes overlap with the writing of individuals, especially when we’re just trying to convey facts,” said supply chain junior Annabelle Prince. “It’s difficult to define our words and ideas as original because pretty much everything already exists.”

Although the students who were wrongfully accused of using AI have shown proof of their writing being original by providing the google docs history, many of them reported they still had to rewrite the assignment or were denied any type of resolution.

This strain has negatively affected students’ educational experiences, with some resorting to simplifying their writing to avoid accusations.

“I have been afraid which has forced me to simplify my vocabulary and sometimes make grammatical errors so that my work doesn’t come off as AI written,” Garza said. “I don’t feel as if I can write to the best of my abilities because I’m afraid I will be accused of using AI.”

The tension between students and professors over AI accusations has led some students to drop courses, which can have significant repercussions.

Dropping a class can jeopardize financial aid eligibility, which often requires a minimum credit load. For students on full-ride scholarships, facing accusations—even if later cleared—can result in losing their funding.

“I dropped the course after being accused. I have spent a lot of time developing my writing style in college and it is not going to change,” said mathematics junior Courtney White. “I did not want to be facing this scrutiny from my professor constantly just because of how I write.”

Students suggest the best way for professors to navigate these issues is by not only running the assignment through an AI checker but comparing it to the students past assignments. 

However, others believe the issue isn’t the use of AI but the lack of knowledge of AI. As AI is continuously expanding, knowing how to adequately work with AI can be beneficial for the future of a student. 

“AI has been a massive disruption and will likely be highly relevant to students’ future careers,” Dr. Kaisen said. “Ideally, we would like to find a way that students can develop AI skills in such a way that they also use those skills to improve their true learning.”

[email protected]

Leave a Comment