The Problem with AI— The Temptation is too Great

I was grading doctoral seminar papers which I had asked to be in Adobe Acrobat format, and suddenly noticed something new.   Not merely the notification top right that I could avail myself of an ‘AI Assistant’  but on the top left there was the comment— this is a long document, you can read the summary instead, click here.   Sorry Mr. AI, but I have to attend to every syllable and comma of my doctoral student’s work, not skipping anything or trusting some AI or Chat Bot’s judgments.   And even worse is the fact that now students can have their papers largely if not entirely written for them by artificial intelligence with the professor none the wiser, unless he or she has previously read other non-AI assisted work by that student to compare it to.   I would imagine that the temptation to use AI even if only for help with English, is especially great for students for whom English is their second language.   And since Asbury has an international PhD program with many foreign students,  I have made it a rule for my students to NEVER use AI for research or composition purposes.  They must do their own researching and writing.   Period.  If they need help with composing in English, I or our writing center can help them with that.  And imagine what will happen at the level of publication. Now all the major publishers have programs that will tell them when it is likely someone is plagiarizing something without attribution of sources.   I once had one of my publishers come back to me with a question– where did you get the phrase ‘a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean’.  They added they had found that phrase on the lips of several preachers in published sermons.   I responded, ‘they got it from me of course’ since I have used the phrase in numerous of my publications to make a point.  Most recently I was on Youtube, and suddenly Russell Brand, of all people quoted me as saying this, with attribution to me.  Well, good for him, as he was right about that.

If it is true that all human beings, even those with some rather high moral standards are subject to temptation, and if it is true that the internet has already provided the impetus to take shortcuts in doing serious research, it is reasonable to conclude that  expecting a principled use of AI by doctoral students without wavering on the principles, is a temptation too great to be overcome.   Hence, my insistence that my doctoral students do and write their own work, whether it is stellar or lackluster.

Enough said on this troubling subject.  Whatever the positive possibilities for AI, making sinful people more honest about their use of sources and of composing documents is not one of them.