Student Blog: AI and Academic Integrity

I remember being fascinated by ChatGPT when I first saw its name in The New York Times. Naturally, to test it, I asked the AI to write out something that would take a lot of thought on a human’s part:

Give me 100 reasons for why computer science is similar to theatre.

Even with these fields being two of my largest interests, I’d always thought of them as two wildly different things. This machine proved me wrong in 100 different ways, in the time it would take for me to think of one of these.

Asking ChatGPT the same question today still yields similar answers. Some of my favorites include:

1. Scripting: In theatre, there's a script that guides the performance; in computer science, there's code that dictates the program's behavior.

6. Audience: There's an audience in both fields—theatre for entertainment and computer science for user interaction.

Of course, asking anyone (or anything) to do this mundane task will return some “stretched” comparisons:

25. Emotion: Both can evoke strong emotions in the audience or users.

71. Ensemble Cast: Ensemble casts in theatre are similar to cross-functional teams.

Regardless of its consistency, this list blew my mind when I first tried it. I was skeptical at first that the website wouldn’t just break down if I asked it for that many reasons. In just a year, though, the mindset is totally different: many people would instantly think “ChatGPT could do that!”

Integrity – especially in a school environment – is a concept that has changed rapidly over the past year. I’ve already noticed my teachers placing less grade-emphasis on homework than there has been on previous years, and while this could be attributed to them not feeling the need to incentivize homework completion, some have outright said that they don’t want to give credit for something that ChatGPT could have been used for.

This is fair! At a certain point, written homework just becomes a tool to use to verify or improve your understanding of class content – at least in exam-oriented classes (usually STEM ones). However, when a humanities teacher is assigning work on an essay, it becomes more complicated. A typical student can’t complete an entire paper in class, and a teacher can’t dedicate tons of class-time to in-class work or they’ll lose out on instruction time.

Ultimately, academic integrity comes down to the student. ChatGPT is essentially a new type of plagiarism – it can make a great resource for non-academic work (just as you don’t have to cite academic studies when in a conversation with someone), however, in academia, it isn’t considered original work if you use it, and it is especially frowned upon if your use of the language model isn’t cited.

So, if you’re looking to generate a shopping list based on a dish you want to make, or you’re looking for 100 reasons why your two favorite things are related, ChatGPT is an obvious choice. If you’re looking to finish an essay quickly that you just haven’t gotten to - consider reaching out to your teacher, and maybe evaluating your time management. While cheating your way through a class may seem easier in the short-run, it’s detrimental in the long-run, regardless of whether the class correlates with your intended career path or not.