[HN Gopher] School did nothing wrong when it punished student fo...
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School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI,
court rules
Author : Tomte
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-11-23 16:29 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| rolph wrote:
| ai hallucinated citations to non existent publications.
|
| in this case, the ai should publish the cited hallucinated works
| on amazon to make it real.
|
| not that it would help us, but the ai will have its bases
| covered.
| smitelli wrote:
| Then they could train the next generation of models on those
| works. Nothing to scrape or ingest, since they already have the
| text on hand!
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| One of the hallucinated authors is literally named "Jane Doe".
| Our society is about to become powerfully stupid.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| In legal cases that is how one can choose to remain anonymous.
|
| See, there's stuff even geniuses dont know.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| That's not relevant to this. It's a direct quote from the
| work the students handed in.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Why do you think the previous poster found that name notable?
| Just because it's inherently funny sounding or something?
| xyst wrote:
| The citizens of USA re-elected an idiot to the most powerful
| office in the free world. We are already "powerfully stupid".
| His cabinet selections already indicate a gutting of federal
| offices and dismantling of DoE.
| Loughla wrote:
| DoE is the department of energy. The department of education
| is ED.
|
| I laughed out loud when I saw that McMahon was his pick. A
| fucking wrestling star for the department of education. This
| is Idiocracy.
|
| Also I laughed because otherwise the fear takes over.
| tzs wrote:
| "Doe" is actually a real surname, with a few thousand of them
| in the US. I'd guess that there probably have been people
| actually named "Jane Doe". I wonder if that causes many
| problems for them?
| hyperific wrote:
| What's striking to me is that the parents sued. RNH passed off
| AI-generated text as their own when they knew how to cite AI
| generated works and were versed in academic integrity. It
| wouldn't occur to me to sue the school if this was my kid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's striking to me is that the parents sued_
|
| And the kid was even offered a redo!
|
| On the other hand, the school caved on National Honor Society
| after the parents filed. So maybe the best move would have been
| (tactically, not as a parent) to show the school the draft
| complaint but never file it.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| They're not optimizing for the kid's education. They optimizing
| for the credentials the kid is able to get.
|
| Filing the lawsuit is an asymmetric bet:
|
| - win, and increase college admissions odds
|
| - lose, and be no worse off that without the suit
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _lose, and be no worse off that without the suit_
|
| This kid should change his name, given his initials, high
| school and parents' names are public record next to a four
| brain cell cheating attempt.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Do you think college admissions officers follow the news
| and use what they learn to maintain a naughty list?
|
| Perhaps a business idea?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do you think college admissions officers follow the
| news and use what they learn to maintain a naughty list?_
|
| College admissions, no. College students and colleagues
| and employers, being able to use a search engine,
| absolutely.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If you search the student's name on Google, you probably
| won't find this lawsuit.
| Retric wrote:
| Admissions know his name and the name of the school,
| which helps find specific students.
|
| It's easy to miss, but I wouldn't be surprised if it
| comes up as "Hingham High School Harris" brings up the
| relevant info. Further, his parents suing may be a larger
| issue for a college than his behavior.
| csa wrote:
| Unless he has someone who is very sympathetic to his
| cause, the teacher/counselor recommendation will wreck
| him.
|
| This guy needs to go to a JuCo that feeds into a decent
| state school -- he's screwed for competitive schools.
| exe34 wrote:
| I'm guessing at some point there will be LLMs trawling
| through news items to put together profiles for people,
| and as the cost comes down, it won't just be available to
| three letter agencies and ad platforms, but schools and
| employers will start to use them like credit scores.
| iterateoften wrote:
| Nope. I just replied above with a similar story when I was
| in school. My classmate got expelled for cheating and sued
| the school. tv segment, articles about him, etc.
|
| Zero effect on his college outcomes. Got into really good
| schools.
| jsheard wrote:
| > lose, and be no worse off that without the suit
|
| If I were in college admissions then I'd probably think twice
| about admitting the candidate with a widely reported history
| of trying to sue their school on frivolous grounds when
| things don't go their way.
| swells34 wrote:
| It does strike me that the purpose in attending college _is_
| the credential you get; education is a far second.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| So what would you do in the parents' shoes?
| erikerikson wrote:
| It strikes me that this is a foolish take to adopt.
|
| I saw lots of students acting a bit like this but I was
| grateful that I could dedicate myself primarily to my
| schooling and took as much advantage as I could to learn as
| much as I could.
|
| The credential gets used as a heuristic for the learning
| you do but if you show up and don't have and knowledge,
| then everything is harder and your labor more fruitless.
|
| I know some people don't care and that there are degenerate
| workplaces but you'll still be left with having been a lot
| less useful in your life than you were capable of being.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > - win, and increase college admissions odds
|
| Will it, though? Like if the college happens to know about
| this incident?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Here are some of the case documents:
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69190839/harris-v-adams...
| iterateoften wrote:
| Almost zero downside. I knew a student who plagiarized 3x so
| they got kicked out. His parents sued. It was even on the tv
| news because they were asking for hundreds of thousands in
| compensation. He lost and the school kept him expelled.
|
| I was expecting the bad press coverage to hurt his college
| chances since there were several articles online about him
| getting kicked out for cheating and then suing.
|
| Nope! Dude got into a really good school. He even ended up
| texting asking me for past essays I wrote to turn in as his own
| to his college classes.
|
| And the kicker was he then transferred to one of the
| prestigious military academies that supposedly upholds honor
| and integrity.
|
| So. There is almost zero downside for suing even if it gets you
| tons of negative publicity.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I don't think we can claim zero downside from one anecdote.
| There are always outliers that can occur from extenuating
| circumstances.
|
| - The family potentially has the financial resources or
| possibly connections to 'make things happen'.
|
| - Perhaps the student is especially charismatic and was able
| to somehow right the situation. Some people have that con-
| artist mindset where they're able to cheat/commit fraud
| through their life with seemingly minimal consequences.
|
| - Perhaps they just got lucky and the administration didn't
| do their due diligence.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Perhaps they just got lucky and the administration didn
| 't do their due diligence._
|
| Are universities _supposed_ to google every applicant?
|
| I mean I haven't been in academia for a decade, but back
| when I was I certainly never browsed a 17-year-old girl's
| instagram before making an admission decision.
| brandall10 wrote:
| Not every applicant, but the ones in the accepted pool,
| it strikes me as odd there isn't some basic amount of
| vetting.
|
| Instagram? No (although, wouldn't be surprised)... but
| doing a gut check with the school admin and looking at
| public records? Sure.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > His parents sued. ...
|
| > He even ended up texting asking me for past essays I wrote
| to turn in as his own ...
|
| > he then transferred to one of the prestigious military
| academies ...
|
| >> There is almost zero downside for suing even if it gets
| you tons of negative publicity.
|
| Sounds like the caveat here should be, "when your
| parents/family is connected".
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Discussed before the ruling:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41861818
| nkrisc wrote:
| > The parents' case hangs largely on the student handbook's lack
| of a specific statement about AI, even though that same handbook
| bans unauthorized use of technology. "They told us our son
| cheated on a paper, which is not what happened," Jennifer Harris
| told WCVB last month. "They basically punished him for a rule
| that doesn't exist."
|
| I'm going out on a limb here, but if this is the viewpoint of the
| people who raised him, then I'm not surprised he cheated.
|
| If this was my son and the facts were the same, he'd be grounded
| in addition to whatever consequence the school deems fit.
| jancsika wrote:
| What's the relevance? Are you going to embark on a "Let's
| Educate The Users" mission for parenting?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| It would be futile. Parents and children are now united in
| not wanting to be educated.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| What is unauthorized use of technology? Is the light I need to
| read not technology? Is using the internet to find more about a
| topic not technology? Where is the line that makes AI
| forbidden?
| theamk wrote:
| Have you actually read the piece? The answers to those is in
| the written policy the student was given. But even without
| the policy, it should be pretty clear that passing others'
| work as your own (be they people or AI) is academic
| dishonesty.
|
| As judge said, "the emergence of generative AI may present
| some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not
| particularly nuanced"
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Is what I wrote here mine or not? I used the autocorrect
| suggestions almost exclusively, wrote few letters only.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Then, no. This isn't text you generated. No one cares on
| Internet forums though.
| theamk wrote:
| Who came up with the words? If autocorrect is acting as a
| typist, transferring your words to screen, you are the
| author.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| What if I first asked ChatGPT what should I say? And
| what's the difference from just copy pasting it?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Don't think yourself into a hole there bud
| jdiff wrote:
| The lack of implicit or explicit authorization. As the school
| has lights, you may assume they are authorized implicitly.
|
| This is unproductive and unenlightening pedantry.
| donatj wrote:
| I think the throwaway actually raises the valid point about
| the rule being an exceedingly broad catchall. The type
| primed for selective and weaponized enforcement.
|
| That said, the kids are clearly defenseless in this
| situation, for blatant plagiarism as well as just being
| just being factually incorrect in their report.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| > The type primed for selective and weaponized
| enforcement
|
| Theoretically true, but irrelevant because this
| particular case isn't that.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Yes, it is broad, and probably a bad rule. That said,
| there is more than enough than that simple rule in this
| case that points toward intentional academic dishonesty.
| If he was my son, getting off on a technicality isn't
| exoneration in my house.
| salawat wrote:
| In education, the goal is internalizing to the individual the
| knowledge required for them to bootstrap into a useful,
| contributing member of society. Things like composition of
| written works, organizing one's thoughts into communicable
| artifacts, doing basic mathematics, familiarity with the
| local and encompassing polity and it's history, how to
| navigate and utilize institutions of research (libraries)
| etc... Any technology employed that prevents or sidesteps
| that internalization is unauthorized.
|
| It ain't that hard to connect the dots unless you're going
| out of your way to not connect the dots.
| emptiestplace wrote:
| Both in and out of education, "it's" always means "it is"
| or "it has".
| nkrisc wrote:
| The part where students were given explicit guidance on the
| use of AI resources and told how to cite it appropriately.
| Besides, even aside from the use of technology it's still a
| blatant case of plagiarism as he passed off work he did not
| write as his own.
| csa wrote:
| The parents seem absolutely unhinged.
|
| Poor kid.
| xyst wrote:
| Yet another "affluenza" raised child joining the ranks of
| society. Probably will become a future C-level exec at an
| American company.
| andai wrote:
| The student was not punished for "using AI", but for plagiarism:
|
| >The incident occurred in December 2023 when RNH was a junior.
| The school determined that RNH and another student "had cheated
| on an AP US History project by attempting to pass off, as their
| own work, material that they had taken from a generative
| artificial intelligence ('AI') application," Levenson wrote.
| "Although students were permitted to use AI to brainstorm topics
| and identify sources, in this instance the students had
| indiscriminately copied and pasted text from the AI application,
| including citations to nonexistent books (i.e., AI
| hallucinations)."
| kotaKat wrote:
| And for AP US History... a college level course. Yikes.
| hackernewds wrote:
| so they were caught due to the citations to non-existing books.
| it seems fine and unconnected to all of the controversial news
| stories of using AI detection, which has a high rate of false
| positives
| rOOb85 wrote:
| The teacher noticed a few irregularities such as the time the
| student spent inside the submitted project. The cheater
| student only had around 55 mins logged whereas everyone else
| had 7-8 hours. That set off alarm bells for the teacher who
| then actually looked into the paper more and noticed fake
| citations and it was flagged as "ai" generated when they ran
| it through a few ai detectors.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Good. Insofar as the point of a school paper is to make the
| student do the thinking and writing, taking it from ChatGPT is
| plagiarizing from OpenAI.
| throwaway8754aw wrote:
| I just used chatGPT to code an html/css/JavaScript solution in an
| hour for coworkers who were having troubles. There were like wow
| that was fast we were trying to figure this out for a few days.
| I'm skilled / an expert but that would've taken me many hours vs.
| a few back n forth with GPT.
|
| Overall my html/css/javascript skills I feel now aren't as
| valuable as they were.
|
| I guess in this instance I cheated too or is it that my developer
| peers haven't gotten into using GPT or they are more moral? As
| well maybe this is just the new normal....
| fifilura wrote:
| The rules for working are very very different from being at
| school.
|
| No you were not cheating, you did what was expected from you.
| But you knew that.
| throwaway8754aw wrote:
| How so and or AI is changing the rules everywhere no? Today
| it seems not good yet tomorrow it's how things are...
| fifilura wrote:
| The goals are very different. It was like this also before
| AI.
|
| The goal in school is to learn things. To learn to write
| you can't just copy an article from a paper and say it is
| yours. You have not learned.
|
| At work, the goal is to get things done.
| throwaway8754aw wrote:
| In our field you needed / need to learn new things to
| stay relevant yet now the new thing does it almost all
| for you.
|
| As well if one generation is using AI to get things done
| why wouldn't a younger generation do the same? Do as I
| say and not as I do.. that never has held well over time.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Yeesh this is full of red flags...
| throwaway8754aw wrote:
| What is..the new normal of using AI to do or help you get
| your job done and or quicker? Comment above shows it could be
| the new normal...
| corytheboyd wrote:
| No. This attitude of being better than coworkers, coming in
| and saving the day. It had nothing to do with using AI.
| It's about "I am better than you" instead of helping people
| out, or teaching them these things you know.
|
| It's just a passing internet comment missing all the
| context, so what do I know.
| throwaway8754aw wrote:
| My comments are to be controversial... To get people to
| think... What is the future with AI and using it as
| such... If I told my coworkers how I achieved it would
| they not think less present day... What about in a few
| years or more it's the norm and mine and everyone's HML,
| CSS, JavaScript skills are less valuable,... this example
| shows that AI will definitely take peoples jobs,
| including my own if I do not ramp up my skills
| salawat wrote:
| You ramping up your skills will do nothing for you if a
| machine can otherwise be delegated your job due to the
| overhead of human worker vs. just owning a machines
| output. Not having to negotiate is extremely valuable to
| a business owner. Mark my words. Until people realize
| that the whole innovation around AI is to sidestep the
| labor class, things'll continue getting much darker
| before they brighten.
|
| And the saddest thing is, the fools think it'll work in
| their favor, and won't blowback with massive unintended
| consequences.
| xyst wrote:
| Probably unpopular opinion here but families, usually wealthy,
| that use the legal system like this to avoid consequences are
| parasites. It reveals not only your poor job of raising your
| children. But also the poor character of the parents.
|
| Glad the courts didn't grant a similar "affluenza" ruling here.
| The student plagiarized, short and simple.
| hinkley wrote:
| How do you get students to engage in creative writing assignments
| in age of AI?
|
| How do you get them to dive into a subject and actually learn
| about it?
| wavemode wrote:
| The same way you did so before LLMs existed - you rely on in-
| class assignments, or take-home assignments that can't be
| gamed.
|
| Giving out purely take-home writing assignments with no in-
| class component (in an age where LLMs exist), is akin to giving
| out math assignments without a requirement to show your work
| (in an age where calculators exist).
|
| Many years before LLMs were ever a thing, I recall being
| required to complete (and turn in) a lot of our research and
| outlining in class. A plain "go home and write about X topic"
| was not that common, out of fear of plagiarism.
| ajot wrote:
| I'm thirty something. How did my teachers engage me in doing
| math? How did they engage me in rote-memorizing the
| multiplication tables when portable calculators were already a
| thing, being operated by coin-cells or little solar panels?
|
| Part of teaching is getting kids to learn why and how things
| are done, even if they can be done better/faster/cheaper with
| new technology or large scale industrial facilities. It's not
| easy, but I think it's the most important part of education:
| getting kids to understand the subjacent abstract ideas behind
| what they're doing, and learning that there's value in that
| understanding. Don't really want to dichotomize, but every
| other way kids will just become non-curious users of magic
| black boxes (with black boxes being computers, societal
| systems, buildings, infrastructure, supply chains, etc).
| dv_dt wrote:
| Invert the assignment, provide a prompt to supply to an essay
| writing AI of the students choice, but the assignment is to
| provide critique for the veracity and effectiveness of the
| generated essay
| m3kw9 wrote:
| AI is the new calc
| zzo38computer wrote:
| It would seem that what was put into the report is clearly wrong
| (in this case from generative AI, but regardless of where it came
| from, it would still be wrong), so it is still legitimate to mark
| those parts as wrong. There are other things too which can be
| called wrong, whether or not the use of this generative AI is
| permitted (and it probably makes sense to not permit it in the
| way that it was used in this instance), so there are many reasons
| why it should be marked wrong.
|
| However, if the punishment is excessively severe, then the
| punishment would be wrong.
| egberts1 wrote:
| This would have been illegal in Italy has their 1970 Worker
| Protection against automated management would kill this AI.
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