Commitment, courage, pride— our school motto. This abbreviation also spells out a second, less admirable guiding principle for students: control, copy, paste.
Hop on a computer, open an AI chatbot, shove assignment instructions in, and then blindly CCP the response.
Having AI speedrun writing assignments is neither clever nor innovative; it is arrogant. Using AI in this way reduces critical thinking and pressures teachers to manage AI use in their classrooms, often without the proper training.
ChatGPT is ranked first worldwide among generative AI products with more than 540 million monthly users. The number of tokens — or pieces of text AI uses to know how to respond— decreases when school is not in session.
This is because students generate their writing instead of doing it themselves, which is called cognitive offloading. This trend is concerning because critical thinking requires active mental effort to analyze and understand information effectively, explained Michael Gerlich of SBS Swiss Business School.
Researchers from MIT, Wellesley College, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design found participants in their study who wrote essays only using ChatGPT showed fewer brain signals than those they told to write without AI. Around 17% of AI users could quote their own essay, compared to 89% in the internet and no resources groups.
Students who frequently use AI in academics may worry these results portray them as lazy or cutting corners. The same study concluded if subjects first wrote without AI assistance and then used it to write on the same topic, brain activity increased.
This means AI is not lethal to academics. The way students are wielding it is. When AI is a tool in a toolbelt, it can boost productivity and brainstorming.
Despite this, teachers continue to play academic tug-of-war against irresponsible AI use, often resulting in counter-productive solutions or doing nothing at all because of inadequate training.
In 2024, the Center for Democracy and Technology found 68% of teachers used AI-content- detection tools regularly, a 30% increase since last school year. However, AI detection tools are often wrong, which only makes it harder to correct students abusing AI.
The study also found a mere 28% were trained on responding to suspected AI use.
Moreover, just 37% have training on what responsible AI use could look like, and 25% say they are good at detecting AI work, with only 37% having training on detecting AI.
Educators are trying to put out a house fire with a garden hose. That’s why tailoring professional development days with sessions devoted to AI training is crucial to boost teacher confidence and accuracy in combating AI use.
Teachers would benefit from recognizing common signs of AI, such as above-grade-level vocabulary, perfect grammar, automated patterns, complex phrases, false information and inconsistencies with past work, that way they can avoid having to use faulty AI detectors.
Districts must provide clear definitions of plagiarism and cheating as they relate to AI, as well as provide policies and clear procedures for teachers on how to follow up after detecting AI misuse.
Switching from faulty AI detection programs to tools that assist with manual detection reduces the risk of false positives such as chrome extension Draftback, which lets users replay a Google Doc’s version history keystroke by keystroke.
And if all that was too much to remember, I guess you can just ask:
“Summarize this article in one paragraph.”
