AAU’s professor and student council recently discussed possible changes to the school’s current Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy to make the guidelines more specific.
Gerald Power, a professor of Humanities and Social Sciences, founded the Academic Writing and Information Literacy Committee to analyze the modern state of information literacy, including the ways AI impacted the field.
“It’s profoundly challenging for professors to assess work [with AI assistance], and it’s challenging for students as well. The question for students is: how do you use this technology and make it work for you in a productive way?” Power said, “How do you avoid the slippery slope of AI doing work for you that you ought to do yourself?”
The majority of AAU professors checked for plagiarism by using the AI detector called Turnitin. However, professors found the tool unreliable because Turnitin’s feedback is often inconsistent with other AI-detection software.
“It’s a headache—it takes away from what we should be doing: engaging with our students and their ideas. For students that do their own creative work themselves, scrupulously and honestly without using AI, it’s a smack in the face,” said Power. “And students who use AI basically get away with it, or are given the liberal framework in which we say ‘okay, it’s mostly your work, so that’s okay.’”
Currently, professors make the final call for the use of AI in their classrooms. In conjunction to that, AAU’s policy is against plagiarism, stating that AI generated content must be cited.
Student council was suggesting an official policy change regarding the extent that AI could be used in assignments before being penalized.
Artificial intelligence technology, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, have blown up after their launches in 2022. The way these tools are being used in academic settings is constantly evolving and a topic of controversy, forming two opposing opinions among students.
“It drives me kind of crazy, I think it’s awful for the future of education,” said AAU student Sierra Krueger-Wolfe, acknowledging that the school should offer a class on the appropriate uses of AI to support original ideas.
On the other hand, some students commended the implementation of AI in replacing tedious tasks, accepting its role in education as preparation for the job market.
“I think it’s a great resource and tool, and it’s a little hypocritical that schools target the use of AI just because that’s the future,” AAU student Lucas Roder said. “Think about how much time I’m wasting writing all this down instead of ‘Ctrl’ ‘C’ and ‘Ctrl’ ‘V’.”
As of now, the AAU policy on AI remains unchanged, but the discussion around AI use in academic settings is evermore relevant.
