The phrase “game changer” is greatly overused, but it seems to fit with higher education since it dramatically changes the old ways of books, lectures, personally written papers, and tests in blue books.

In today’s Martin Center article, John Stuart reflects on the problems AI poses. His interest was triggered by a false accusation of having used AI to do a paper. He writes,

With the arrival of the short missive from my professor informing me that my essay had been flagged for AI use, I was caught up in what would became a weeks-long process to appeal and clear my name of alleged AI use on an assignment in my counseling graduate course. The ordeal thrust me into the university’s AI-detection administrative machine, where I joined the many others across higher education experiencing a similar false-positive fate. Without wanting to be, I had become part of the broader AI conversation taking place across the university ecosystem.

False positives on AI detection is just one issue. Consider also attendance regulation. Stuart continues, “If, for example, federal regulators require me, as a student, to prove my attendance and involvement in an asynchronous class by writing a few discussion-board posts or completing a few assignments per week, then it is important that I actually do that work. If I can use AI to write my posts, then clearly the model is broken, as regulators cannot guarantee that it is I who have met the attendance requirements.”

Read the whole thing.