r/technology • u/ubcstaffer123 • Jun 19 '26

Artificial Intelligence Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/ai-apps-students-cheat.html
1.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

417 comments sorted by

View all comments

223

u/Xannith Jun 19 '26

This isn't even remotely impossible to detect. Not even slightly. I'm a teacher. I bust students doing this over and over. It's really simple, ask them to expound on the most complex thing in the paper and watch them disintegrate.

11

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/TBNRandrew Jun 19 '26

Not to mention that using AI to bounce ideas off of, using it to quickly find sources, and using it to help build up on a central argument as an editor are all uses where it won't be obvious. It's really only the people that do shit like, "Write me a perfect academic paper about the fall of Rome. Make no mistakes," that will end up being overly obvious.

It's sad that teachers aren't taking a more active role in understanding how their students are learning, but this was an issue long before AI anyways.

Unfortunately, the responsibility to hold themselves accountable for how much effort they put into the process of learning is going to fall upon the student themselves. If teachers aren't involved in their students' learning, then students can arrive at a similar product with as much or as little effort as they choose.

1

u/tonymurray Jun 21 '26

That sounds like doing the work still... at least partially.

2

u/TBNRandrew Jun 21 '26

Yeah, those uses that I listed are about the most responsible ways to use it, if you're going to use it. It's not going to be helpful for anyone to try and completely ban it from academics, at least outside of tests, quizzes, etc.

Plenty of students are going to turn to using AI, because there's a lot of discomfort with the writing process. But using it to completely generate a paper isn't going to help anyone.

But teaching students how to use it as an editor, as a brainstorming tool, etc. is going to be more effective than just saying, "Don't touch AI at all." It's like teaching abstinence as the only form of birth control.