Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg

Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg

Thousands of university students in the UK have been caught misusing ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools in recent years, while traditional forms of plagiarism show a marked decline, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

A survey of academic integrity violations found almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating using AI tools in 2023-24, equivalent to 5.1 for every 1,000 students. That was up from 1.6 cases per 1,000 in 2022-23.

Figures up to May suggest that number will increase again this year to about 7.5 proven cases per 1,000 students – but recorded cases represent only the tip of the iceberg, according to experts.

The data highlights a rapidly evolving challenge for universities: trying to adapt assessment methods to the advent of technologies such as ChatGPT and other AI-powered writing tools.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    11·
    11 hours ago

    If ChatGPT can consistently do the needed activities without raising eyebrows, it’s kind of a redundant job anyway. If they’re posing problems that have little to do with the job, it’s a shit course.

    • kescusay@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      That’s an odd thing to say. For one thing, there are plenty of physical activities that one could get a reasonable description of from ChatGPT, but if you can’t actually do them or understand the steps, you’re gonna have a bad time.

      Example: I’ve never seen any evidence that ChatGPT can properly clean and sterilize beakers in an autoclave for a chemical engineering laboratory, even if it can describe the process. If you turned in homework cribbed from ChatGPT and don’t actually know how to do it, your future lab partners aren’t going to be happy that you passed your course by letting ChatGPT do all the work on paper.

      There’s also the issue that ChatGPT is frequently wrong. The whole point here is that these cheaters are getting caught because their papers have all the hallmarks of having been written by a large language model, and don’t show any comprehension of the study material by the student.

      And finally, if you’re cheating to get a degree in a field you don’t actually want to know anything about… Why?

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        11·
        9 hours ago

        Well then make the students clean and sterilise beakers. It only kills assignments in written form with limited supervision, the way I assume calculators and traditional algorithms changed a bunch of things before my time. Lots of professors and educators in general are making exactly that kind of change.

        That means more lab time, it’s true, but it’s not the first time universities have had to expand their facilities. And at the other end think of all the savings on teaching writing.

        And finally, if you’re cheating to get a degree in a field you don’t actually want to know anything about… Why?

        It’s kind of unrelated, but money and prestige, probably. Caring about knowing for it’s own sake is depressingly rare.