How Educators Are Scrambling To Crack Down On AI Plagiarism

From early elementary education all the way to graduate college programs, educators are trying to deal with an increasingly insidious form of cheating.

With the rise of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools, it is all too easy for any student to create a seemingly well-researched paper on any subject imaginable. That leaves teachers and professors in the unenviable position of trying to sort out this big mess.

AI detectors are far from perfect

While there are some programs available that attempt to determine whether a particular passage was written by a human or AI, it’s not an exact science. Sometimes AI gets past the detector … and sometimes a human’s hard work gets inaccurately labeled as that of a chatbot.

One leading program, Turnitin, is “incredibly inaccurate,” according to Temple University associate vice provost Stephanie Laggine Fiore, who found that it was pretty good at confirming what had been written by humans but couldn’t reliable weed out “hybrid” assignments heavily aided by AI.

And that’s just one of the unreliable options currently on the market.

An old approach to a new problem

As it stands, innocent students are getting wrongfully accused of using AI plagiarism while guilty parties are getting off scot-free. That’s why a growing number of educators are opting for a decidedly low-tech approach to testing their students’ knowledge.

After heavily relying on digital platforms to conduct tests and collect assignments, teachers and professors are increasingly shifting toward paper exams in order to ensure that AI isn’t providing all the answers.

Some educational experts are deeply concerned, whereas others believe this is just a temporary impact of the latest technology. After all, students have always been able to find a way to cheat — and diligent teachers have always developed methods for catching them in the act.

Chris Agee August 11th, 2023

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