According to a recent viral social media post, a professor at Texas A&M flunked a little over half a class of seniors, stopping them from getting their diplomas, after he claimed they all used ChatGPT to complete multiple assignments.
The story, shared in a Reddit post, exploded online as the user shared the alleged email from the professor who accused the class of using artificial intelligence to write their assignments.
“You should all be able to see your final grade in the course at this point on D2L,” the professor allegedly wrote. “Before everyone emails me individually read this email carefully. In Grading your last three assignments I have opened my own account for Chat GTP. 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.”
The Reddit user who shared the screenshotted email claimed that the assignments were essays about agriculture science and were completed throughout the “last few months of classes.”
The user goes on to say that the professor “elected not to grade them” until the day after Texas A&M’s graduation, meaning that the “university is withholding an entire class’s diplomas after they walked the stage.”
“I have so far spoken to 3 affected students who have timestamped Google docs proving they did not use gpt, to which the prof (Dr. Jared Mumm) ignored the emails instead only replying on their grading software in the remarks: ‘I dont grade AI bull----,’” the user wrote.
While ChatGPT has caused concern for many in the field of academics, the site isn’t the best at remembering what it has and hasn’t written.
As one user responding to the Reddit post pointed out, ChatGPT will almost always answer “yes” when asked if it wrote something, even if it never did.
Since the incident, an update on the initial Reddit post shared that the professor was working with the school to resolve the issues with several students who had their diplomas put on hold.
The Reddit user also shared that at least one student has so far been exonerated, and the professor has apologized to them.
The user shared that the diplomas will remain on hold for those affected until the “investigation[s] into each individual is completed.”
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