A Massachusetts couple claims that their son’s high school attempted to derail his future by giving him detention and a bad grade on an assignment he wrote using generative AI.
An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.
In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.
Yeah, I’m 100% with the school on this one.
Bad parenting. Not only did they not talk to their kid about what constitutes honourable academic conduct, not only did they not talk to their kid about the pitfalls of using generative AI, especially in an academic context, they are now teaching their brat that the proper response to fucking up is to blame the rules, to blame the school, to blame other people. Bad parents.
I wonder, have these people no shame?
Having worked with parents like this before: No. None at all. They’d rather throw thousands of dollars at different attorneys hoping one of them will take the case to teach their children to never have shame.
spoiler
When you put it that way, I would bet good money which party these people are voting for.
Should kids use chatgpt to do their assignments, probably not. I think everyone here is looking at this in the wrong way though. If they rules did not state he could not use it, a proper response to me would be to tell the kid to do the project over without using chatgpt on another topic, and update the rules. Instead they did the school equivalent of arresting the student and detaining him (detention), and marked the assignment poorly which impacts his future.
The kid should not have done this.
The school/teacher also should not have done this.
According to the information we have, no rules were broken, so it was an unwarranted punishment.
On a side note your comment is also very “fall in line” thinking. One could argue the parents are standing up for their kid and teaching him how to stand up for himself.
The authorities need to follow written laws and procedures. Otherwise we are just punishing people for being different.
Everyone should be mad at the school because we are having to use taxes to address a situation that a teacher could have addressed long before by just telling the student to do the assignment over.
Bullshit. Every academic honesty policy I’ve seen says, in short, to do your own work, including this school’s:
If the student tries to pass off AI writing as his own, it definitely falls under that second clause. Does it really need an exhaustive list of all the places/people/technologies to not copy from?
Then the parents deserve to lose and pay all costs of both parties.
Standard citation rules already rule out using AI to write your essay.
How, you can ask the ai for where it sourced the info, and what books to acquire. You just used AI, and can use whatever citation method the teacher asks for. If you mean for the AI to write the essay, I would say it is plagiarism, but to use AI is no different than using a search engine to find sources.
Shit, you could use the AI to tell you how to properly write your citations in the form requested by the teacher as well.
I don’t know which LLM you’re using, but I haven’t seen any that disclose that information. And if you ask the probable word generator, you’ll just get probable words back, no guarantee that they’re real sources.
I verified you can do so with ChatGPT earlier, put it in my comment elsewhere. Asked it how many battles took place during the American Civil war, then asked where it sourced the data from, then asked if I was doing a research project on it what books I should consider, and it gave me a list and such.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/14108419
Because if you didn’t write it, you have to cite it.
If a computer writes it and you say it’s yours, your plagiarizing. You’re not allowed to pay someone to write the essay for you, same goes for a computer.
I do think the method should be mentioned. Kids should be taught to cite what they used ai for and which one amd there should be precise rules stating which use cases are ok and which are not tolerated (some SHOULD be tolerated). Detention is too much though.
All of academia is breathing a sigh of relief that you’re not a teacher.
:) Ok. But why not to teach children how to work with new technology correctly? It’s not as simple as AI bad.
Because the point of the essay is to teach a topic, and hone research skills.
Typing a prompt in to a chat bot and copying the result is not an effective teaching tool. If you wanted to use it as a starting point it may occasionally be handy, but you need to know enough about what you’re asking it to know when it’s wrong. You need to take the results, and modify them to both sound human and correct mistakes. By that point you might as well just write the essay. And sure, there’s something to be said for teaching that, but clearly that’s not what this student was doing, nor are the multitude of my wife’s students doing that when they use an LLM for their essays.
There were rules against using AI, they’re just arguing that they weren’t in the “Student Handbook”.
If you click through to the legal filing linked in the article, they lay out that they informed the students of the rule during a lecture, they have a record of his attendance at that lecture, and parents also got handouts during a parent teacher day.
edit: quote
Nah bro, this is common sense for every member of the academic community at all levels.
What’s for sure is that schools and universities need to teach students how to responsibly use AI.
Academics are supposed to get people ready to participate in everyday life as an adult where you will have to be responsible for your actions. If they go into accounting, programming, journalism, engineering, marketing, or any other field that uses AI, he will need to know how to responsibly use it as you said.
It basically is a data aggregator, I would imagine it would be a great tool for a research project, you just need to teach the students to properly use it.
Usually it may be as simple as asking a question, “How many battles were there in the American Civil War”
It gives you an answer.
* “Where did you source that data from?”
The estimate of about 50 major battles and approximately 10,500 total engagements in the American Civil War is based on commonly accepted historical research. This data is derived from primary sources, such as the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (a 128-volume collection of reports from both Union and Confederate forces), and secondary sources, including analyses by Civil War historians.
For example, organizations like the American Battlefield Trust and historians such as James M. McPherson have compiled lists of major engagements, while smaller skirmishes are documented in historical military records. However, there is some variability in the total count depending on how engagements are classified (e.g., whether smaller skirmishes or raids are included).*
"What would be a good book for me to reference for a research project on this?
*For a research project on the American Civil War, several well-regarded books offer thorough coverage, blending military, political, and social history. Here are some excellent references:
“Battle Cry of Freedom” by James M. McPherson This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is widely considered one of the best single-volume accounts of the Civil War. It covers the causes, major battles, and aftermath, providing a comprehensive view of the war from both Union and Confederate perspectives.
“The Civil War: A Narrative” by Shelby Foote This is a three-volume series that offers a detailed and vivid narrative of the war, focusing on the military campaigns. Foote’s work is well-known for its storytelling style and meticulous attention to detail.
“This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War” by Drew Gilpin Faust This book explores the cultural and societal impact of death during the Civil War and is a key resource for understanding the human cost of the conflict and its broader consequences on American society.
“For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War” by James M. McPherson This book uses soldiers’ letters and diaries to delve into the motivations and experiences of the men who fought. It’s a great complement if you’re focusing on the personal, psychological, or social aspects of the war.
“A People’s History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom” by David Williams This book offers a bottom-up view, focusing on the experiences of common soldiers, slaves, women, and civilians. It’s excellent for understanding the war beyond the battlefield and for exploring the social history aspects.
“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin While not exclusively about the war’s battles, this book provides deep insight into the political environment surrounding Lincoln, his leadership during the war, and how he navigated the country through its most difficult time.
Each of these books can serve as a strong foundation for different aspects of a Civil War research project, depending on whether you’re focusing on military history, social impacts, or political dynamics. Let me know if you’d like more specific recommendations!
Going and acquiring those books would be considered using CharGPT, and mean I am now eligible to be placed in detention and mark my project down to a D according to the rules the school followed above.
Horseshit.
There was aggregation of data before chatGPT that still exists and it was in fact advertised as a good place to start your research: Wikipedia. You go and do your own reading based on guidance and then write an original paper. Before that, they had a version in writing called the encyclopedia which recommended additional reading (depending on edition).
It is a CLEAR instance of plagiarism to copy and paste from Wikipedia, and totally fine to use its cited sources for your own research. This is exactly the same. If you use the same verbiage, or copy the facts directly (which btw may be totally wrong, because AI says we need to eat rocks) then it’s plagiarism. Someone else has done the work and not been given credit.
Done. Period.
You can ask the librarian, chat gpt, Wikipedia, reddit, your mom, or a local hobo to recommend you reading material and that is fine. Taking their work and calling it your own is not fine. This isn’t brain surgery.
Can you show me where in the article it says the AI wrote the paper or that he copied and pasted the paper from the AI? It doesn’t say that, you filled in the blanks that weren’t there and got upset at the rage bait story. The kid was in the wrong, but if you ask Google, your mom, or the librarian for to help you find sources to write your paper it is the same as asking AI to give you a list of sources to write a research paper. If you asked the last one for the list of sources, it is using AI to help you write it… Which I don’t think should qualify as getting detention.
He likely was an idiot and copy pasted as you said, we just don’t know that information from the article.
I’m not upset at any story, Im perplexed by your supposition that he may very well be getting in trouble for getting a lIt review to guide his research from an AI.
The blanks are easily filled because: 1. Collecting references is not something that is an academic problem (nor is it traceable in this way), 2. nowhere in the article does it say the parents lawsuit contests the use of AI, nor attempt to paint it as something so reasonable as (1), and 3. generating text responses is literally the function of an llm.
Sure, there are benign uses of llms for research like summarizing ideas or writing an outline, but that would be a) hard to prove, and b) if that’s the case it’s the first sentence of the lawsuit that it’s not plagiarism to do that.
I mean what would a lawyer see in taking this case if it were that simple. I would think we are missing a lot of details. I mean clearly he isn’t going to get into those prestigious schools after suing his current school. So something is strange. Sorry about using the term upset though, it’s hard to put tone to text, so when your first word was a cuss word I took it as upset.
I’m not really concerned about word choice here, so no worries.
I would wager that this has little or no effect on school choice unless he’s actively in the application process now, and even then it’s not like there’s a disclosure that needs to be made (i.e., please check this box if you’re engaged in active litigation).
Having watched election- and politics-related lawsuits for basically 8 years in the US, it seems like for enough money you can get a lawyer on board for just about anything. I can also imagine this as a potential “easy win”: sue a public school to death and bury in paperwork, they eventually settle out of court because the cost is less than fielding a team of lawyers on public tax dollars. This is, of course, provided the case isn’t just dismissed out of hand. IANAL but this flavor of approach is pretty successfully used by patent trolls.
I have a hard time seeing ANY additional depth to this story: teachers don’t work in a vacuum, schools aren’t typically litigious, and the school pre-releases their expectations in a handbook. If this is a loser, the admin says sorry and reverses grades much more easily than going to court.
Seems like this is simple entitlement fueled by money to me.
I think I don’t have enough details to agree with you.
Lots of variables, some with make the school look good, and/or the kid.
The student might be an angel who used a small bit of gpt, after saving puppies all night ; or a hellion someone finally had enough of, after repeated issues.
The parents may be bad, absolute stereotypes. Or perhaps there is a deeper story here about why they are willing to publicly humiliate themselves ; which most lawyers and/or common sense would have told them ahead of time.
Nobody here knows that much
While I’m still on the fence, I’m with the other guy until more information comes out (innocent until proven guilty and all). The information we have is that no rules were broken, perhaps instruction though; it would be similar if a teacher said don’t use Google, or Wikipedia, or any other resource. AI is in education for better or worse.
Agreed, that’s why updating the rules and asking the student to do the project over would make far more sense to me. It sets the precedent for if any student does such again.
As I said elsewhere, it could be a great tool, simply asking it for a list of books for the research project would be considered using it, which I don’t think should qualify a student to be placed in detention, or you would need to ban search engines and librarians as well.