Student Blog: AI and Academic Integrity

The idea of academic integrity is nothing new, but the look has definitely been updated in the past few years. In theory, it should be a simple code to follow: don’t cheat, don’t lie, do your own work. There have always been students who struggle with following this, though, for a whole bunch of different reasons. It has gotten a million times easier for the student to cheat, and in turn, a million times harder for teachers to track it. The rise of AI and programs like ChatGPT has introduced a new wave of cheating in higher education. It is simple, really, but that’s the dangerous part. It answers questions, and students generally have a lot of questions, but it blurs the line between answering a straightforward question and answering an essay prompt or a math equation. Now, I’m not about to be over here speaking on some untouched pedestal. I do think there is a genuine use of AI that could be beneficial to students. I have used it in my English classes to help parse through dense readings I don’t entirely understand. I have conversations with the program about the work and how to understand it. I don’t say “what is 'xyz' chapter in 'abc' book about?”. That method doesn’t do any good for the student if they’re looking to learn about something. Sadly, a lot of people who use ChatGPT for school purposes aren’t looking to learn, they’re looking for a quick solution to get something done they don’t want to do. I get it, school is hard, and sometimes you just don’t have it in you to get it done, but there are better solutions. I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I know I have had the urge to let AI do an assignment, but I’ve never ended up going through with it.

I have always been a student who values academic integrity. I don’t like the feeling of guilt of having lied or the thought that I might have missed out on an important piece of my education by letting someone, or something, else do my work. When AI started getting popular when I was in high school, I was intrigued, and I played around with it like everyone else, but I never thought about using it for my assignments. It felt unfair to myself, my teachers, and my peers. I know not everyone shares this attitude, but it’s the attitude I’ve always had towards AI. I am not trying to shame anyone for using AI for whatever reason; everyone has their own motives, and I don’t want to lump a group of people in a hive of “AI bad, human good”. I do think there is a time and place to use it and to explore it, and the classroom is not usually one of them. If someone turns in an essay that they didn’t write and the teacher finds out that it’s AI, then they give it a zero, and there are meetings and possible suspensions and a whole mess of things that follow the AI discovery. If anything, I say don’t do it to save yourself the headache of the possibility of getting caught. Whether you use it or not is up to you, but now you’ve heard my thoughts on the subject, so take that as you please.