#Education

AI threatens academic integrity—Lecturers

By Saheed Ibrahim

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Academics have expressed worry over new technologies, especially ChatGTP, in the education sector.

ChatGTP, which was created by a San Francisco-based tech company OpenAI, is capable of writing academic materials for students and making plagiarism undetected.

An academic paper entitled Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring Academic Integrity in the Era of ChatGPT was published this month in an education journal, describing how artificial intelligence (AI) tools raise several challenges and concerns, particularly about academic honesty and plagiarism.

What readers and indeed the peer reviewers, who cleared it for publication,  did not know was that the paper itself was written by the controversial AI chatbot ChatGPT.

“We wanted to show that ChatGPT is writing at a very high level”, said Prof Debby Cotton, Director of Academic Practice at Plymouth Marjon University, saying the technology is improving very fast and it is going to be difficult for universities to outrun it.

A computer scientist and expert on contract cheating at Imperial College London, Thomas Lancaster said many universities were panicking as it had become incredibly tough to prove it has been written by a machine because the standard of writing is often good, he said. The use of English and quality of grammar is often better than from a student.”

While warning that the latest version of the AI model, ChatGPT-4, is much better and capable of writing in a way that felt more human, he said academics could still look for clues that a student had used ChatGPT.

Cotton said that to ensure their academic paper hoodwinked the reviewers, references had to be changed and added.

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Universities in the UK have started initiating policies to punish students found using AI for academic exercise.

Prof. Kate Whittington explained that “It’s not a case of one offense and you’re out. But we are very clear that we won’t accept cheating because we need to maintain standards.

The Head of Academic Integrity at Coventry University, Irene Glendinning said: “We are redoubling our efforts to get the message out to students that if they use these tools to cheat, they can be withdrawn.

In Nigeria, ChatGTP has become widely used among students, content creators and professionals but there is currently no policy to regulate its use.

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