ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Artificial intelligence is touted to help save time and writer’s block with sites like ChatGPT and YouChat. But it’s also causing helping students across campuses everywhere cheat on assignments -- and making it difficult for those not cheating to prove their work is, indeed, theirs.
For UCF student Christian Bradley, the issues began after he turned in an English report.
“I got a grade from my professor that was very low,” said Bradley. “He left a bunch of comments and one of them was that it was marked as written by AI.”
Bradley swore that’s not what happened. But not unlike many other universities, University of Central Florida is cracking down on any chances that students could be using AI for the wrong reasons.
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While leaders won’t get into specifics of how they do it, a university spokesperson sent us this statement in relation to AI:
“UCF is working closely with faculty members to help them use AI in a way that develops students’ critical thinking skills while also encouraging academic integrity. This includes hosting conferences and providing online resources to support faculty as they navigate the use of AI in their classrooms.
Some faculty members allow students to incorporate AI into assignments, while others do not allow it. The university has advised students to understand each faculty member’s policies and ask them about it if they are in doubt.
Students who have concerns that their writing was incorrectly linked with AI are encouraged to first talk with their faculty member about it and then reach out to the department chair.”
“I basically just clicked on the autosaves and showed him my progress of me writing through it and getting it all done on my own.,” said Bradley. “I’m very thankful that my professor was very understanding of this and very helpful. But I can definitely see how it could be an issue in the future for students.”
Over at Bethune-Cookman University, Communications Professor Aleya Bradley said she’s seen artificial intelligence used in papers firsthand as well. She admits that the software program “Turn It In” that professors use isn’t always perfect.
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“It’s very great for plagiarism. Very great for article-to-article or paper-to-paper. But the thing with the testing AI, it’s not 100%,” said Professor Bradley.
Bethune-Cookman bans the access of AI powered writing assistants like ChatGPT and YouChat from all university servers, which means students would have to go out of their way, off campus, to be able to use them. But, still, it happens -- which is why Professor Bradley said she requires students to go back to old-school, pen and paper assignments when possible.
“Handwritten assignments or things in class where I can actually watch them do it. Because if not, there is a high chance that they might use AI to complete these assignments,” said Bradley.
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