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Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

theregister.com

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Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#21

Post by zifpanachr23 »

grugagag wrote: post #16
haburka wrote: post #13

Absolutely insane that you can sue a school in the US for this kind of thing. I mean, these parents have got to be out of their mind to spend so much effort and money to defend their child from rule breaking. It must be so embarrassing as the child to have parents like this.

On the one hand I agree with you and think school shouldn’t allow for sloppy thinking and relying on effortless work such as prompting, copying and pasting. And yet we have no idea where this will take is nor have we any idea if it will be 100% bad, we assume so and I tend catch myself do this too. But once the storm settles this could open us up to a new chapter in education for example. Mainstream AI may evolve bey…

I have a concern about a tragedy of the commons type situation. How many students is this going to force into cheating in this manner in order to remain competitive? I think a lot, if we aren't incredibly strict right away. It could ruin academic culture in the US, which was generally very good when I was in school (as in, cheating was taken very seriously and was socially frowned upon by students as well as faculty). I don't think the benefits of AI are so great at this time as to make that a risk worth taking.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#22

Post by magnetowasright »

haburka wrote: post #13

Absolutely insane that you can sue a school in the US for this kind of thing. I mean, these parents have got to be out of their mind to spend so much effort and money to defend their child from rule breaking. It must be so embarrassing as the child to have parents like this.

Especially when the student handbook detailing the rules for using AI (found elsewhere in the thread) were quite clear and by the sound of it the student clearly violated it, and admitted to doing it. Absolutely bonkers.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#23

Post by whycome »

ksaj wrote: post #2

What kind of school has weekend detentions? What if a student has a job. Even without that, weekends are often family time, and certainly unwind time. I would never allow a school to punish my kid on a non-school day, no matter what they may or may not have done.

Weeknights suffer from same issues tho

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#24

Post by grugagag »

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #21
grugagag wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand I agree with you and think school shouldn’t allow for sloppy thinking and relying on effortless work such as prompting, copying and pasting. And yet we have no idea where this will take is nor have we any idea if it will be 100% bad, we assume so and I tend catch myself do this too. But once the storm settles this could open us up to a new chapter in education for example. Mainstream AI may evolve bey…

I have a concern about a tragedy of the commons type situation. How many students is this going to force into cheating in this manner in order to remain competitive? I think a lot, if we aren't incredibly strict right away. It could ruin academic culture in the US, which was generally very good when I was in school (as in, cheating was taken very seriously and was socially frowned upon by students as well as faculty)…

I agree with you and that’s most concerning, studens who don’t intend on cheating may have to in order to stay competitive. But maybe the method of testing needs to change. Again, only time will tell how this all will play out. Pocket calculators were probably a concern for education when they came out and yet things evolved in a way that worked out. Personally I highly dislike oral examinations but maybe they’ll make a comeback and AI technology will play a part in students training for it.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#25

Post by PawgerZ »

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #20
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a student was caught cheating on their project, admitted to such, was punished, and now the parents are suing the school in an attempt to salvage their child’s academic reputation To be fair, the question is whether the student handbook's definition of cheating covered using AI. Of course, the kid is almost certainly already rotten, given his parents couldn't find a better way to resolve this.

I'd have to agree. And honestly, even if the kid didn't admit to using AI, if they were using AI as a source and not citing it, then it was a failing paper regardless, as certainly one of the requirements was to cite sources. If I was handling this, I'd treat it the same as if somebody just copy pasted some text off Google search and didn't cite. I'm not sure I'd give the student a 0. But it wouldn't be a good grade…

> I'm not sure I'd give the student a 0.

Completely agree with you on all of it, but, to let you know, sometimes there are school-wide policies on plagiarism that teachers have to follow. My highschool made teachers give an automatic 0 for any plagiarism.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#26

Post by eddd-ddde »

Vuska wrote: post #10

The motion to dismiss is revealing. https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf The AI policy starts at the bottom of page 5. Students have to mention any use of AI, even generating ideas. They must include an appendix with "the entire exchange, highlighting the most relevant sections" and provide an explanation for how and why everything was used. It seems overly strict to me, hastily written when ChatGPT became p…

It's all meaningless anyways. What's the difference in me asking ChatGPT something and using the answer, and using some website as reference when the website itself could have used AI without me even knowing.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#27

Post by washadjeffmad »

Vuska wrote: post #10

The motion to dismiss is revealing. https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf The AI policy starts at the bottom of page 5. Students have to mention any use of AI, even generating ideas. They must include an appendix with "the entire exchange, highlighting the most relevant sections" and provide an explanation for how and why everything was used. It seems overly strict to me, hastily written when ChatGPT became p…

AI is externalized assistance. Used one way, it can be a guide that helps a individual learn. Used differently, it's no different than asking someone else to do your work for you.

The issue here is academic honesty, not necessarily the definition of "AI". Should a student using Grammarly submit all drafts of their work and cite the changes they didn't make? Should students receiving external help in the form of parents and tutors cite that assistance?

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in an age when ubiquitous search and the internet democratize access to information resources. It's trivial to duplicate documents today, and It's no more of a burden to students to disclose how they are writing.

When I was growing up, teachers knew families who didn't have a home library or had only one car and didn't live near the library were at a disadvantage, so research periods were granted during class. Essays were written and turned in during class periods, and sudden changes to handwriting or style were easy to catch.

Today, the challenges are different, so it seems fair to change the requirements and criteria in response. I've advised friends in education to try assigning AI generated papers with citations as tests and ask students to correct them and expand them from sources.

Asking Siri whether information matches a particular source still isn't possible, and if you're going to have to go through the effort of compiling a bunch of sources for RAG, I think any student equipped to do that would also find it reasonably more efficient to simply do the work directly.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#28

Post by ksaj »

hahdflakdfwdasd wrote: post #7
ksaj wrote: post #2

What kind of school has weekend detentions? What if a student has a job. Even without that, weekends are often family time, and certainly unwind time. I would never allow a school to punish my kid on a non-school day, no matter what they may or may not have done.

They can be cooperative. I had to work M-F and weekends and they let me serve detention during active school hours, typically during lunch hours or a study hall block.

This is how we used to do it. Lunch or during a spare (unassigned class time) only.

I think weekend detention would feel like detention for the teacher/monitor as well.

Re: Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

#29

Post by bearjaws »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #27
Vuska wrote: post #10

The motion to dismiss is revealing. https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf The AI policy starts at the bottom of page 5. Students have to mention any use of AI, even generating ideas. They must include an appendix with "the entire exchange, highlighting the most relevant sections" and provide an explanation for how and why everything was used. It seems overly strict to me, hastily written when ChatGPT became p…

AI is externalized assistance. Used one way, it can be a guide that helps a individual learn. Used differently, it's no different than asking someone else to do your work for you. The issue here is academic honesty, not necessarily the definition of "AI". Should a student using Grammarly submit all drafts of their work and cite the changes they didn't make? Should students receiving external help in the form of paren…

This is brilliant, it's like you read my mind when it comes to AI in education, thank you.
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