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A student who said she submits AI-generated book summaries in place of reading the assignments and writing her own summaries\u00a0poses for a portrait at San Francisco State University last month. She was one of a dozen students at SFSU and at\u00a0UC Berkeley who spoke freely about how they use AI to do some or all of their schoolwork.<\/p>\n
Manuel Orbegozo\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
A UC Berkeley senior sat eating a sausage sandwich near Sather Gate the other day when a reporter asked if he had ever used AI to write a paper instead of writing it\u00a0 himself.<\/p>\n
Yes, he had. \u201cBut not verbatim. I always rewrite it. I always like to add my own pizzazz,\u201d he said, after being assured of anonymity to encourage candor about the sensitive subject of cheating in the age of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
University of California and California State University campuses, like others around the country, all outlaw cheating\u00a0\u2014 commonly understood as \u201cthe attempt to pass off work as your own without having done the work,\u201d said Irina Raicu, director of internet ethics at Santa Clara University\u2019s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.<\/p>\n
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But in just a few years, generative artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude have become part of students\u2019 daily life. With AI often closer at hand than a ballpoint pen\u00a0\u2014 able to write brainy essays, answer any question and summarize entire books for students who never crack them open\u00a0\u2014 what does cheating mean to them any more?<\/p>\n
UC and CSU are still figuring out how AI fits into their educational mission: how to embrace and encourage the technology, while discouraging its abuse, as busy students are tempted to outsource their schoolwork to chatbots they believe can do it better and faster than they can.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Meanwhile, guidance from UC Berkeley\u2019s Academic Senate<\/a> and CSU<\/a> acknowledges that AI has created potential gray areas in ethical decision-making. They emphasize that instructors are expected to use their syllabi to spell out acceptable uses of generative AI tools for their courses, while reminding students they are still required to produce their own work.<\/p>\n But not all students appear to be checking the rules. Conversations with a dozen of them at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State yielded story after story about how they parcel out their reading and writing to machines, leaving open the question of what they are actually learning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI have an A because I use Chat,\u201d a San Francisco State psychology major said of her statistics grade. \u201cIf there\u2019s a math problem, instead of me trying to study for a class I don\u2019t really care about, Chat will just solve the problem for me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Everybody\u2019 uses it, \u2018since high school\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n While AI mimics intelligent behavior, it so far mimics ethical behavior only with specific prompting.\u00a0<\/p>\n And that is up to students.\u00a0<\/p>\n One pre-med student at UC Berkeley, for example, said that before asking AI to help her get started on, say, a physics problem, she must warn it: \u201cDon\u2019t tell me the answer!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Two of the 12 students interviewed at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State said they abstained from AI altogether, citing the technology\u2019s excessive use of water <\/a>and energy in one case, and an unwillingness to \u201close my voice\u201d in the other. Four students said they used it only for legitimate, tutoring purposes\u00a0\u2014 to explain math and science complexities or to quiz themselves\u00a0\u2014 and never to do their work for them.<\/p>\n But six said they use AI to do some or most of their work, with some insisting that this isn\u2019t cheating. Others said that it is. Some criticized professors for prohibiting AI, while others claimed their instructors don\u2019t actually want them to do the assigned reading and are fine with AI-generated summaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Chronicle did not conduct a scientific survey but listened as students discussed the tools that make their academic experience unlike that of any in the history of the planet.<\/p>\n \u201cI know it\u2019s cheating, and I do feel a little oof about it,\u201d a San Francisco State freshman said as she bit into a burrito in the student union.<\/p>\n She types her notes into ChatGPT then asks it to turn them into polished assignments for English and communications classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s basically what I submit. I\u2019ll say, this sounds a little robot-y, so I\u2019ll tweak it a little,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s getting my stuff done, so I don\u2019t feel horrible about it.\u201d<\/p>\n At UC Berkeley, a junior majoring in media studies said she relies on AI for all assignments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe heavy lifting I use AI for is my reading,\u201d she said, naming a site that turns reading material into short podcasts that she listens to before class. \u201cKind of like, abridged.\u201d<\/p>\n What about using AI for her writing? \u201cYeah, 10 out of 10\u201d assignments, she said. \u201cThough I try not to plagiarize off ChatGPT.\u201d<\/p>\n Her definition of \u201cplagiarize,\u201d at least, was hers alone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n She\u2019ll have a \u201cbig sploosh of ideas,\u201d which she types into Chat. \u201cI\u2019ll be like, can you condense my ideas into a few sentences? And it will. I\u2019ll usually copy what it says. I\u2019ll consider it mine because they\u2019re my ideas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n At San Francisco State, a student majoring in speech and language said she couldn\u2019t remember the last book she had read for school, though she had recently been assigned at least three.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t supposed to read the books,\u201d the student claimed. \u201cJust summarize them.\u201d<\/p>\n To achieve this, she used two AI sites: one to summarize, and the second to ask if the summaries were good enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second site told her the summary of \u201cThe Glass Castle,\u201d a memoir, needed more work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor that one, I did not really understand,\u201d the student said. So she returned to the first site and told it to do a better job.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody uses\u201d it, she said. \u201cSince high school. It\u2019s like a tool.\u201d<\/p>\n Colleges race to adapt<\/p>\n The existence of intelligent tools doesn\u2019t change the definition of ethical, fair behavior, said Ahmet Palazoglu, chair of UC\u2019s Academic Senate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe core principle that students must do their own intellectual work has not changed,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n All UC and CSU campuses have academic integrity policies that explicitly require students to submit their own work and to attribute material they didn\u2019t create to the source that provided it.<\/p>\n In the UC system, the Academic Senate\u2019s committee on educational policy provides guidance<\/a> on standards for academic conduct, while faculty at each campus decide how to put the ideas into practice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n UC Berkeley\u2019s Academic Integrity<\/a> policy, for example, requires \u201cproper attribution\u201d in all work, including \u201cdrafts and homework assignments!\u201d It says cheating \u201cincludes fraud, deceit, or dishonesty in an academic assignment\u201d or using materials that are \u201cprohibited or inappropriate in the context of the academic assignment in question,\u201d such as when a syllabus prohibits the use of AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n The school\u2019s Code of Student Conduct<\/a> warns that \u201ccheating, fabrication, plagiarism and facilitating academic dishonesty\u201d are subject to discipline.\u00a0<\/p>\n Traditionally, violations were considered rare. Then, as the rise of the internet enabled easy copy-paste plagiarism<\/a>, cheating detection tools became common. Then, \u201ccontract cheating\u201d arose, as students bought custom-written papers <\/a>from human fraudsters in the pre-Chat era.<\/p>\n But AI now facilitates cheating that is so easy to produce and hard to detect that experts fear an epidemic of cheating is unfolding.<\/p>\n This new reality is having a domino effect at UC Berkeley, where campus officials have posted a flurry of wisdom<\/a> and resources<\/a> to help professors minimize cheating. There are workshops and<\/a> no fewer than six groups of big thinkers<\/a> discussing how to co-exist with such tools, while UC\u2019s systemwide Academic Senate<\/a> and Office of the President have four others doing the same.<\/p>\n \u201cWe take the challenges seriously,\u201d said Palazoglu of the Academic Senate. \u201cThe answer is not to pretend AI does not exist, but to be clear about what constitutes real learning. To redesign learning assessments where needed, and to have frank conversations with students about why doing the work themselves matters.\u201d<\/p>\n The university must \u201chelp students see that abuse of AI\u2019s capabilities simply undermines their ability to take full advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,\u201d said Oliver O\u2019Reilly, UC Berkeley\u2019s vice provost for undergraduate education. \u201cWhen students cheat, they only cheat themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet where persuasion fails, guardrails are needed, O\u2019Reilly said. \u201cInstructors are adapting by changing assessments, insisting on proctored exams and redesigning courses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n CSU\u2019s approach: Embrace the tools, accept the risks<\/p>\n CSU declared itself the \u201cnation\u2019s first and largest AI-empowered university system\u201d last year when it announced deals<\/a> with ChatGPT\u2019s inventor, OpenAI, and other tech companies to expand students\u2019 access to AI tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the CSU, we have two imperatives: to equip our students with the skills to leverage these powerful tools, and to transform our own institutional practices through AI to better serve the largest public university system in the nation,\u201d Ed Clark, the university\u2019s chief information officer said at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n A year later, on April 1, CSU released \u201cAhead of the Curve<\/a>,\u201d a report on AI use that surveyed 80,626 students and 13,434 faculty and staff across its 22 campuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nearly 80% of the students said they would not submit AI-generated work as their own. That left more than 16,000 students, about 20%, who did not check that box.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMost students are not using AI to cheat,\u201d said Jason Maymon, a CSU spokesperson. \u201cThe idea that AI is driving a widespread increase in academic dishonesty at the CSU or in higher education is misleading.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet thousands of student responses left open the possibility that they do submit AI-generated work as their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked to comment on the students who confessed to doing just that, Maymon accused the paper of \u201cpromoting a narrative that students simply want to use AI to cheat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Focusing on dishonesty, he said, \u201cthreatens to undermine the responsible, ethical ways students are already engaging with these tools at the CSU.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n CSU\u2019s student conduct policy<\/a> prohibits \u201cforms of academic dishonesty that are intended to gain unfair academic advantage\u201d\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and a webpage, \u201cEthical and Responsible Use of AI for Students<\/a>,\u201d that gives classroom examples.\u00a0<\/p>\n Preventing cheating has never been easy. It\u2019s harder now.\u00a0<\/p>\n