> The parents' case hangs largely on the student handbook's lack of a specific statement about AI, even though that same handbook bans unauthorized use of technology. "They told us our son cheated on a paper, which is not what happened," Jennifer Harris told WCVB last month. "They basically punished him for a rule that doesn't exist."
I'm going out on a limb here, but if this is the viewpoint of the people who raised him, then I'm not surprised he cheated.
If this was my son and the facts were the same, he'd be grounded in addition to whatever consequence the school deems fit.
What is unauthorized use of technology? Is the light I need to read not technology? Is using the internet to find more about a topic not technology? Where is the line that makes AI forbidden?
Have you actually read the piece? The answers to those is in the written policy the student was given. But even without the policy, it should be pretty clear that passing others' work as your own (be they people or AI) is academic dishonesty.
As judge said, "the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced"
In education, the goal is internalizing to the individual the knowledge required for them to bootstrap into a useful, contributing member of society. Things like composition of written works, organizing one's thoughts into communicable artifacts, doing basic mathematics, familiarity with the local and encompassing polity and it's history, how to navigate and utilize institutions of research (libraries) etc... Any technology employed that prevents or sidesteps that internalization is unauthorized.
It ain't that hard to connect the dots unless you're going out of your way to not connect the dots.
The student was not punished for "using AI", but for plagiarism:
>The incident occurred in December 2023 when RNH was a junior. The school determined that RNH and another student "had cheated on an AP US History project by attempting to pass off, as their own work, material that they had taken from a generative artificial intelligence ('AI') application," Levenson wrote. "Although students were permitted to use AI to brainstorm topics and identify sources, in this instance the students had indiscriminately copied and pasted text from the AI application, including citations to nonexistent books (i.e., AI hallucinations)."
Probably unpopular opinion here but families, usually wealthy, that use the legal system like this to avoid consequences are parasites. It reveals not only your poor job of raising your children. But also the poor character of the parents.
Glad the courts didn’t grant a similar “affluenza” ruling here. The student plagiarized, short and simple.
What's striking to me is that the parents sued. RNH passed off AI-generated text as their own when they knew how to cite AI generated works and were versed in academic integrity. It wouldn't occur to me to sue the school if this was my kid.
Nope. I just replied above with a similar story when I was in school. My classmate got expelled for cheating and sued the school. tv segment, articles about him, etc.
Zero effect on his college outcomes. Got into really good schools.
If I were in college admissions then I'd probably think twice about admitting the candidate with a widely reported history of trying to sue their school on frivolous grounds when things don't go their way.
It strikes me that this is a foolish take to adopt.
I saw lots of students acting a bit like this but I was grateful that I could dedicate myself primarily to my schooling and took as much advantage as I could to learn as much as I could.
The credential gets used as a heuristic for the learning you do but if you show up and don't have and knowledge, then everything is harder and your labor more fruitless.
I know some people don't care and that there are degenerate workplaces but you'll still be left with having been a lot less useful in your life than you were capable of being.
Almost zero downside. I knew a student who plagiarized 3x so they got kicked out. His parents sued. It was even on the tv news because they were asking for hundreds of thousands in compensation. He lost and the school kept him expelled.
I was expecting the bad press coverage to hurt his college chances since there were several articles online about him getting kicked out for cheating and then suing.
Nope! Dude got into a really good school. He even ended up texting asking me for past essays I wrote to turn in as his own to his college classes.
And the kicker was he then transferred to one of the prestigious military academies that supposedly upholds honor and integrity.
So. There is almost zero downside for suing even if it gets you tons of negative publicity.
I don't think we can claim zero downside from one anecdote. There are always outliers that can occur from extenuating circumstances.
- The family potentially has the financial resources or possibly connections to 'make things happen'.
- Perhaps the student is especially charismatic and was able to somehow right the situation. Some people have that con-artist mindset where they're able to cheat/commit fraud through their life with seemingly minimal consequences.
- Perhaps they just got lucky and the administration didn't do their due diligence.
On the other hand, the school caved on National Honor Society after the parents filed. So maybe the best move would have been (tactically, not as a parent) to show the school the draft complaint but never file it.
The same way you did so before LLMs existed - you rely on in-class assignments, or take-home assignments that can't be gamed.
Giving out purely take-home writing assignments with no in-class component (in an age where LLMs exist), is akin to giving out math assignments without a requirement to show your work (in an age where calculators exist).
Many years before LLMs were ever a thing, I recall being required to complete (and turn in) a lot of our research and outlining in class. A plain "go home and write about X topic" was not that common, out of fear of plagiarism.
I'm thirty something. How did my teachers engage me in doing math? How did they engage me in rote-memorizing the multiplication tables when portable calculators were already a thing, being operated by coin-cells or little solar panels?
Part of teaching is getting kids to learn why and how things are done, even if they can be done better/faster/cheaper with new technology or large scale industrial facilities. It's not easy, but I think it's the most important part of education: getting kids to understand the subjacent abstract ideas behind what they're doing, and learning that there's value in that understanding. Don't really want to dichotomize, but every other way kids will just become non-curious users of magic black boxes (with black boxes being computers, societal systems, buildings, infrastructure, supply chains, etc).
Invert the assignment, provide a prompt to supply to an essay writing AI of the students choice, but the assignment is to provide critique for the veracity and effectiveness of the generated essay
The citizens of USA re-elected an idiot to the most powerful office in the free world. We are already “powerfully stupid”. His cabinet selections already indicate a gutting of federal offices and dismantling of DoE.
"Doe" is actually a real surname, with a few thousand of them in the US. I'd guess that there probably have been people actually named "Jane Doe". I wonder if that causes many problems for them?
I just used chatGPT to code an html/css/JavaScript solution in an hour for coworkers who were having troubles. There were like wow that was fast we were trying to figure this out for a few days. I'm skilled / an expert but that would've taken me many hours vs. a few back n forth with GPT.
Overall my html/css/javascript skills I feel now aren't as valuable as they were.
I guess in this instance I cheated too or is it that my developer peers haven't gotten into using GPT or they are more moral? As well maybe this is just the new normal....
No. This attitude of being better than coworkers, coming in and saving the day. It had nothing to do with using AI. It’s about “I am better than you” instead of helping people out, or teaching them these things you know.
It’s just a passing internet comment missing all the context, so what do I know.
My comments are to be controversial… To get people to think… What is the future with AI and using it as such… If I told my coworkers how I achieved it would they not think less present day… What about in a few years or more it's the norm and mine and everyone's HML, CSS, JavaScript skills are less valuable,… this example shows that AI will definitely take peoples jobs, including my own if I do not ramp up my skills
You ramping up your skills will do nothing for you if a machine can otherwise be delegated your job due to the overhead of human worker vs. just owning a machines output. Not having to negotiate is extremely valuable to a business owner. Mark my words. Until people realize that the whole innovation around AI is to sidestep the labor class, things'll continue getting much darker before they brighten.
And the saddest thing is, the fools think it'll work in their favor, and won't blowback with massive unintended consequences.
I'm going out on a limb here, but if this is the viewpoint of the people who raised him, then I'm not surprised he cheated.
If this was my son and the facts were the same, he'd be grounded in addition to whatever consequence the school deems fit.
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