AI Use Degraded by a D Grade | Opinion

I was fortunate enough to attended high school long enough ago to avoid all the peer pressure and bullying that comes with the social media age. Unfortunately, that also means that I missed out on artificial intelligence's ability to answer my myriad of questions.

As AI develops, I continue to be amazed at its ability to listen to any question one can think of and return answers at remarkable speed—even when the question is asked conversationally, rather than using the more formal language of traditional search. While not always completely accurate, an AI tool like Perplexity—which provides footnote references for its answers—has very substantially improved the credibility of these fantastic thinking machines.

However, AI has created problems for academia and one such issue has landed in a Massachusetts federal courtroom. The case involves an highly accomplished Boston-area high school student who got a perfect ACT score, the highest marks on AP tests, and is at the top of his class.

The trouble began when the student and a partner were doing a history project about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's role as a civil rights activist. A teacher noticed that AI had been cited in a draft of the paper and claimed its use was impermissible—and worse—was a significant academic integrity violation. The students were required to start their project over and received a D, despite their efforts. The student, a senior, believed the grade and alleged violation would bar him from the National Honor Society, and would significantly undermine his chances of being admitted to an elite university.

His parents filed a lawsuit in federal court asking that the grade be changed and the academic violation be removed on the basis that AI had been used simply as a research tool and plagiarism had taken place. Moreover, their lawyer argued that the high school's rules did not clearly indicate that use of AI was impermissible at the time of the "offense." The school took the position, in the words of a faculty member, that the case was "the worst episode of academic dishonesty we have seen in 16 years." The school amended its handbook and added to the section on "Academic Integrity: Cheating and Plagiarism," redefining cheating to include "unauthorized use of technology, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) during an assignment."

The parents' lawsuit maintains that the student did not use AI to write the paper but instead to help craft an outline. The family's lawyer said that if the paper itself had been written by copying language from AI, it would be a very different matter.

In a preliminary ruling, the federal judge in the case sided with the school district, indicating that courts should not overrule educators when it comes to a matter of grades. As it turned out, after the school reviewed the case further, the student was admitted to the National Honor Society, although the academic integrity violation still standsDespite the judge's preliminary, ruling the case has not yet been set for trial.

The facts of this specific case aside,c, it is very clear AI in the classroom is going to create a host of new issues. Certainly, AI-cheating detection tools will improve. At the same time, AI will likely continue to improve in ways that make it harder to detect, as least by schools without the latest detection tools.

The question is what the right policy for AI use in various academic settings will be. It is indisputable that AI is a tremendous asset that allows you to dig deeper and deeper on any subject with greater quality answers and to approach any subject with greater nuance. So, the use of AI as a research tool seems to be something that should be fully embraced in education and not subject students to disciplinary action.

That, of course, is not the same thing as allowing AI to write a paper verbatim for the student, which clearly would be reasonable to prohibit. In between, there is a wide expanse of gray areas.

What if a student asks for an AI site to write a paper for him or her and then paraphrases every sentence so that the student's voice comes through? They did not do any of the preliminary research or thought related to the assignment, so should they get any credit for the work?

What if a student asks that the precise pages of books and journals on their subject be served up with the most relevant quotes cited and organized, but then writes what's left themselves? Does that count as original work?

Is there going to be any way to challenge these kinds of gray areas without an enormous amount of conflict developing between students and teachers, no matter how well formulated an academic integrity policy on AI is?

Some 24 states have published guidelines for school districts on how to create generative AI policies. Massachusetts, where this federal case now lies, is not one of those states. One of the key challenges, of course, is that formulating a policy around something that is evolving so quickly is incredibly difficult.

There is no doubt there will be enormous value that comes from the educational use of AI. One use that will be a huge educational leap forward is having personalized AI natural language tutors who can interact with any student, providing the kind of customized help that is beyond the pocketbooks of the vast majority of parents and students today.

That will upgrade the education system immensely in this country. But along the way, there is sure to be much additional controversy. School policy decisions in this arena should be biased in the direction of adopting AI capability and not driven toward trying to discourage students from embracing it. In sum, proper use of AI should be encouraged, as opposed to this case where the D grade appeared to degrade its use.

Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Claigrid, Inc. (the cloud AI grid company), an editor-at-large forNewsweek, the founder ofCNBCand aCNBCcontributor. He also establishedMSNBC,is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation's democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.