Students trying to pass off previously written works as their own is nothing new, but the rise of ChatGPT has made school administrations extra vigilant in checking to see if a student’s paper was plagiarized.
Unfortunately, there’s just one problem: ChatGPT is not designed to detect material that it has previously composed itself.
There are programs to check to see if a students’ work is not their own, like Winston AI and Content at Scale, but that didn’t stop a professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce from running his students’ papers through ChatGPT, to check if the program had written any of them.
Well, ChatGPT falsely claimed that HALF of his students had the program write their papers, so he promptly flunked them. Dr. Jared Mumm explained in an email to students, “I copy and paste your responses in this account and Chat GTP will tell me if the program generated the content. I put everyone's last three assignments through two separate times and if they were both claimed by Chat GTP you received a 0.”
Despite the pleas, and multiple students showing Dr. Mumm their timestamped Google Docs, he still proceeded to issue half the class failing grades, telling students, “I don't grade AI bullshit.”
As a result, most of the seniors in the class, who had already graduated, had their diplomas officially put on hold.
The university investigated the matter, telling Business Insider in a statement, “University officials are investigating the incident and developing policies to address the use or misuse of AI technology in the classroom.
“A&M-Commerce confirms that no students failed the class or were barred from graduating because of this issue. Dr. Jared Mumm, the class professor, is working individually with students regarding their last written assignments.”
At least one student so far has been exonerated so far, to which Dr. Mumm apologized. Two students, however, admitted to using Chat GPT earlier in the semester, which has complicated the situation for everyone who wrote their papers on their own accord.
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