Colleges are pushing professors to revamp assessments to keep AI out.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | PhonlamaiPhoto and prill/iStock/Getty images
As faculty prepare their assessments for the new academic year, many are facing an artificial intelligence–powered academic integrity conundrum.
First, there’s the undeniable reality that access to AI tools have made large-scale cheating easier than ever. Autonomous AI agents have shown that they can complete—and ace—entire online courses without any help from the student enrolled in the class. Faculty at Brown and Alcorn State Universities went viral this summer after setting traps that indicated the majority of their students used AI to complete major assessments. And according to one recent national survey, 73 percent of faculty say they have personally dealt with academic integrity issues involving AI.
At the same time, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hold students accountable for suspected unauthorized AI use. Numerous studies have shown that AI detectors—such as those developed by OpenAI, Writer, Copyleaks, GPTZero and CrossPlag—exhibit inconsistencies, produce false positives when evaluating human-generated writing and are biased against non-native English writers. In some cases, those false positives have resulted in accused students filing lawsuits against their universities.
