"The use of generative AI is forbidden. You will receive a zero, be ineligible, and your record will be examined for plagiarism starting with this occurrence. You have a brilliant mind and we are here to help you learn how to use it, not burn down the planet."
It's very effective but the swipe at sales emails feels out of place. It may not be literature or even academic but it is a skill being degraded by AI usage, by bypassing authentic human thought and effort.
I don’t, because it’s impossible. Also, I refuse to be a cop in my classroom. If students want to waste their time and money by using AI then it harms only them.
They really are just hurting themselves. I remember catching students as a TA copying verbatim out of the answer guide (the Prof allowed limited access to check homework). They weren’t disciplined, but skipping the exercises didn’t help on exam day. Fortunately, this was just a couple of students.
I was impressed with WU when I visited to give a talk to students. I know a former physics professor and have worked with a number of graduates. I imagine (hope) LLM cheating isn’t as widespread there. I’m more concerned about large public universities, which were already becoming diploma mills.
Long before AI there were cheaters; most of them got weeded out in my particular field. I thought then: Imagine going through life knowing you cheated your way through college.
Problem is, those who use AI for essays etc don't view it as "cheating". They see it as just another tool they can use, like Wikipedia, Google, MS Word, etc.
If it is any comfort, my son, who will be a senior in college this year, and his peers all eschew AI, not only because they acknowledge as cheating, but also because they know it’s often wrong and lacks nuance. They won’t even use it for study purposes.
Might I make an editorial observation? In some places, your statement says A1 instead of AI. Otherwise, I think this is great. They are only hurting themselves if they fail to learn the material.
I’ve had similar in my syllabi nearly since ChatGPT came out.
At first, I allowed rewrites but because there are still too many cheaters, the penalty is now an automatic failure of the assignment for using it. I’m not playing.
I had a dean tell to stop reporting AI-generated student work (explicitly forbidden on my syllabus) because it’s the future and we should be encouraging students to build ai aptitude.
The ability to articulate one's distinctive perspective, backed up by good arguments and evidence, is not an inborn human trait...it must be cultivated by practice. Offloading the work of thinking to a machine will reduce the number of clear, critical thinkers in a polity. An authoritarian's dream.
My daughter was in debate club last year and their topic was AI use in education settings. Though she learned to effectively argue both sides, she thinks utilizing it to do work you should have to actually use your brain to do is “stupid.” And she’s only 14.
Easy way to spot the chat gpt essay is the em dash - most people can't find an em dash on a keyboard - press Shift + Option + hyphen (-) like this — way too much trouble for a lazy human 😀
Also, the more you write, the better you get at it and the less time it takes! I dunno, I tested myself against AI for a fairly low stakes activity (turning a Jira ticket into a sentence-long bug release note) and I was 3x faster b/c of my product knowledge and skill.
No idea because it’s impossible to tell for sure. But my sense is that the vast majority of students are doing their own writing based on my experience grading student work for 20+ years.
NOTE: this is not a function of LLMs. This began with ubiquitous access to search engines, & an inability to recognize 'trusted' vs dishonest sources. In CA it was compounded by a legal opinion that we could not block wireless signals, & students had unfettered access to Google, etc..
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."
I like this statement. I started 4 semesters ago with something like “cite it like you would any other source,” which turned out to be embarrassingly naive. Now I’m assessing every stage in the writing process, which greatly multiplies my work load. I’m not sure how much longer I want to do this.
It is infuriating that many administrators buy into "AI" as a surrogate for teachers/course staff, when the effect is to necessitate pedagogy that is more personal and less "scalable" (unless you abandon learning as a goal)
Comments
"The use of generative AI is forbidden. You will receive a zero, be ineligible, and your record will be examined for plagiarism starting with this occurrence. You have a brilliant mind and we are here to help you learn how to use it, not burn down the planet."
.. i'm mean.
At first, I allowed rewrites but because there are still too many cheaters, the penalty is now an automatic failure of the assignment for using it. I’m not playing.
We are so very cooked.
lmfao
how about critical thinking altitude. That dean is a moron.
Anyone can put a prompt into AI and spit out hot garbage.
can save a bunch on dorms by just mailing the students their degrees once their checks for 4 years of tuition clear...
Fwiw I remember very much enjoying the discussion and discursive essays you set when I did a class or two with you... quite a while ago now haha
Additionally:
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."
Hannah Arendt
It is infuriating that many administrators buy into "AI" as a surrogate for teachers/course staff, when the effect is to necessitate pedagogy that is more personal and less "scalable" (unless you abandon learning as a goal)
https://bsky.app/profile/randomwalker.bsky.social/post/3lcdu5qcls222