Kalley Huang, writing for The New York Times:
It is now not enough for an essay to have just a thesis, introduction, supporting paragraphs and a conclusion.
“We need to up our game,” Mr. Aldama said. “The imagination, creativity and innovation of analysis that we usually deem an A paper needs to be trickling down into the B-range papers.”
[…]
Other universities are trying to draw boundaries for A.I. Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Vermont in Burlington are drafting revisions to their academic integrity policies so their plagiarism definitions include generative A.I.
Maybe a future for essay writing looks more like:
- Craft an effective prompt for a given assignment.
- Read and fact check the initial output. Revise your prompt and return to step one as necessary.
- Taking into account things learned during the fact-checking process, revise and rewrite the output from step two. Cite external sources to support your claims.
- If your essay still fails an “AI detector” screening that means you have not revised it enough. Return to step three. If your essay contains factual inaccuracies or uncited claims, return to step three.
Yes, this still assumes there will be reliable “AI detector” services. Yes, there will still be a cat and mouse game where students find ways to trick the AI detection systems. I don’t think that is really something you can avoid. So, sure, update your academic integrity policy accordingly. Ultimately, though, I think you need to start from the assumption that generative AI will be an ongoing presence in the classroom. From there, encourage a classroom culture that embraces AI as an imperfect, but increasingly important, tool.
Previously: