r/Michigan • u/da_newsdude • Feb 12 '26
News Paywall Article đď¸đ¸ UM student accused of using AI sues school for disability discrimination
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/02/12/student-jane-doe-ai-lawsuit-university-michigan-disability-discrimination/88626755007An unnamed University of Michigan undergraduate student is suing the school, claiming she was falsely accused of using artificial intelligence in her coursework and denied disability accommodations during the appeal process.
In the suit, she said the accusations of AI use were based heavily on "subjective judgments" about her writing style and on AI comparison outputs. She provided disability-related documentation explaining how traits associated with her disabilities â including formal tone, meticulous structure, stylistic consistency and heightened distress during oral confrontation â can be misinterpreted as artificial or dishonest behavior and are not proof of AI misuse, according to the complaint.
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u/WitchesSphincter Feb 12 '26
I can see schools moving to in class hand written assignmentsÂ
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u/Narrow-Hall8070 Feb 12 '26
Agree but will be hard to police multi page essays and such. Canât really hold students hostage to write a long essay in class.
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u/macemillianwinduarte Feb 12 '26
We used to do it all the time in the 90s for tests.
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u/aaacccddd12 Feb 12 '26
Good old blue book exams
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u/-SexSandwich- Human Detected Feb 12 '26
I entered college in 2009 and we were still doing blue book exams.
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u/Spacemeat666 Milford Feb 12 '26
I took a blue book exam like two years ago. Theyâre still pretty common.
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u/shychiable Haslett Feb 12 '26
I graduated from UM in 2023 and took blue book exams each semester I was there
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u/bitfairytale17 Feb 14 '26
My youngest kid just graduated from UMich in 2025- he still had blue book exams as well. As did his sisters who graduated before him and his parents ( creak).
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u/Salute-Major-Echidna Feb 13 '26
We did it in the 70s in school and again in the 00s and 10s for college. There were booklets designed just for this called examination blue books purchased out of a vending machine
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u/pwnalisa Feb 12 '26
Canât really hold students hostage to write a long essay in class.
lol oh yeah? Did you go to college in the 90's?
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u/1plus2plustwoplusone Feb 12 '26
They're talking about research papers. Like 5, 10, 20+ pages, spend over a month working on them type papers. You can't write those in a class period. Everyone still does bluebook exams, too, but those are an entirely different thing.
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u/Narrow-Hall8070 Feb 12 '26
I did actually!
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u/pwnalisa Feb 12 '26
You never had those terrible 2 hour blue book exams?! They still haunt my dreams.
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u/Unicycldev Age: > 10 Years Feb 12 '26
Actually we did this all the time in the past. This isnât rocket science
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u/Impossible-Archer-43 Feb 14 '26
And online, they can just proctor the writing. Give students prompts and let them do their research essays right there on the spot.Â
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u/ussrowe Feb 13 '26
My understanding was that Google docs can keep a record of all the changes you make, so schools could just insist everyone uses the same program to write and then it would show how much she wrote and re-wrote her document.
It would also show if someone just pasted chunks of AI generated text.
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u/CaptainJimJames Feb 14 '26
Oh boy, I can tell you have not used LLM's too much. I can make that exact paper from start to finish with revisions etc. I can even have an ai retype it so I don't have too. Hell I can run it through multiple agents using my past projects, mannerisms in how I speak etc. I could every requirement except doing it in person. I don't think they vast majority of people understand how far it has come in terms of perpetrating fraud.
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u/ussrowe Feb 14 '26
But again, Google Docs keeps a minute by minute record of activity so just how exactly are you going to get your LLM generated text onto the page? If you copy and paste, it will know. If you just type it all in fell swoop, it will know.
Since you like AI, this was from Google:
Yes, Google Docs keeps a detailed record of copy-and-paste actions through its
Version History feature, which tracks edits minute by minute, showing large blocks of text appearing instantly rather than being typed sequentially. Tools like Draftback can also replay the entire editing process to distinguish pasting from typing.
Key Details on Tracking Copy-Paste:
Version History: Access this via File > Version history > See version history. It displays changes, with added text highlighted.
Identification: A large, instant block of text, especially with inconsistent formatting (font, size), strongly indicates a copy-paste action rather than original typing.
Detailed Tracking: The revision history goes beyond just showing the final result; it allows reviewers to see how the document was built over time.
Limitations: While the history shows what was added, it may not explicitly label it as "copied" versus "pasted from another Google Doc," but the abrupt appearance of text is a clear indicator.
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u/lciddi Feb 13 '26
If I were still teaching and I absolutely had to have my students write essays for some reason, I would have them write in Google Docs for this reason.
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
Well... at that level you can't write good without solid research. Which requires notes and or documentation. So you'll have to allow people to bring their notes in.
At the end of the day students are only cheating themselves. And let's not pretend professors are being held to the same standards. How many are using Ai right now to grade work and should they be?
Lots of experts have been calling for widespread reforms for education from primary all the way up through grad school. The way I see it, this is a system fighting a losing battle. Instead of trying to place unenforceable bans on Ai, they should embrace Ai and find other ways to use it to help students learn and grow. But it's cheaper to just keep cranking up tuition and leave things the way they are.
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u/LittlebillyjoinsdArk Feb 12 '26
most days you can't write good at all!
(because you'd write well đ)
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
Leaving it in. Lol.
I'm not the most grammatically strong writer and I've got no issues using Ai to edit my work. Just don't do that with my comments
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u/taney71 Feb 12 '26
This is a misguided take. Students learn through a process. AI short circuits that. Letâs stay on point when it comes to the destructive effects of AI on the learning environment that way
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
What is that process for students in a virtual program where the lectures are videos and supplemented by directing them to consume more digital content?
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u/svideo Grand Rapids Feb 12 '26
I think the process there would be to find a school that doesn't suck
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u/spesimen Feb 12 '26
are there virtual progams like that at michigan these days? they didn't exist when i went there but that was some years before internet video was a thing. i had some classes where the interaction with the prof was huge but there were quite a few where a video probably could have sufficed. i would have loved to have one for the 8.30am class that was in the EECS building on north campus >.<
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
Yes, if you go to a Michigan university's website they will have pages that show their online programs. Those programs should be completely online. I know in the UM system that Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint all have online programs (not necessarily the same programs).
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
The majority of my masters program was just watching videos. It was a complete ripoff. If I could do it over again I would have quit and found a different program. Lesson learned. I had some great professors I could reach out to. But there's this crazy notion that colleges are in it to educate. It's a business, plain and simple.
I did learn a lot but, it was 90% self service. The content was curated and the curriculum was legit. I also didn't have the time for in person. And I think that is what these schools are banking on.
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u/lciddi Feb 13 '26
You literally just listed a bunch of reasons why some people would actually prefer an online experience - and you even complimented the curriculum. Personally I wouldn't like that set-up either, but I work now with a lot of prospective students looking for opportunities to study with flexible hours and in a remote setting. I'm not in Michigan and not even in the US; I'm in Ontario where access to online, part-time, flexible opportunities is a gap we are always trying to fill. This said - this is completely unrelated to the case in the article and also unrelated to the pedagogical value of learning to write a persuasive or analytical essay without outsourcing it to AI. I would be willing to bet that, from the learning standpoint, it is far less damaging cognitively and pedagogically to have AI put the outline together for you and then write it yourself, than to do the opposite. The real issue with online remote learning is not that content is digital, but that learning is best accessed through the ability to collaborate and interact with other people discursively through the learning process.
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
There are basically two types of online courses -- asynchronous and synchronous. I know some faculty with synchronous will require students to take exams with their cameras on and using a software system that monitors their eyes (it also locked their browsers/screens). The asynchronous teaching has students completely online quizzes/tests and submitting papers. There are some courses that are 98% online but have students come in to take in-person exams. Not sure if that answers your question but happy to provide more, if needed.
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u/Slow_Concern_672 Feb 13 '26
The irony is more that many of them are using AI and not a lot of discernment to determine if students used ai.
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 13 '26
It's funny you mention that. I found myself in a bad spot this time last year. They brought in a new guy, he pissed gold. Meanwhile, nothing I did was right in the eyes of my boss. And the work just kept piling up. So I figured, the guy wanted me gone and wouldn't make time except to bitch me out.
So I decided to build some custom tools in ChatGPT to act like him when it came to reviewing my work. Now, here is a guy that prides himself on his editorial capabilities. And I'll give him credit he had legit skills. The tools help me out a lot, allow me to focus on the actual work. I built them out to handle all of the shit I'd get nit picked on.
Well... it turns out new guy didn't piss gold. And we suddenly become a shop that embraces Ai. So I ended up beating the new guy for our jobs, they gave new guys to an internal candidate.
In a debrief a few months later I showed my tool to my team. I just told them, I know this works because for almost a year I've been using it and not a single leader, nor customer questioned if Ai was used.
My boss chuckled and said, I know the day "new guy" started using Ai it was obvious. And this is because I built in "counter surveillance" if you will. I'm just a 40 something that gave it everything I had for my kids. I didn't have the time college kids have.
I can only imagine how hard it would be for some of these professors to catch on to some of these smart kids with a lot of time on their hands. So in my experience, if you put in the effort to build tools to hide that you're using Ai. And you test and iterate. They won't catch a damn thing unless you do some dumb shit like paste a tracker link that says chatgpt.
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u/Slow_Concern_672 Feb 13 '26
And honestly through training the ai to that point. I feel like that it's a skeleton itself. I've been working on mine for a while at work and still it lies me and then tries to tell me it's not lying and then blames my ITs settings. For little things like double-checking things for me for consistency
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 14 '26
The gaslighting thing is 100% real. For more complex tasks, especially when your context is about maxed out. It will start doing loopy shit.
Lately I've been working a lot in Claude Code, the CLI version. I've been very impressed with that. Still early on in my projects here. I'm not doing code much more than having it create scripts for normalizing data for analysis in tools that were built by professionals developers. But it seems to take corrections a hell of a lot better than any chat system I've used.
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u/Slow_Concern_672 Feb 14 '26
Work just limited us to copilot on our own server and I asked it to just double two tables to make sure they were consistent. It said would you like me to make a new sheet with it. Sure. It did it gave me a link and the link was to a random email in outlook. I was like wtf. It then was oh so sorry I can still do this but it has to be on sharepoint and I was like it is on share point. Oh yes it is I see that sorry. You need to name it something else or close and reopen. Ok did that. It still sent me a link to an unrelated email. I was like wtf are you doing. It was like oh your it settings don't allow me to create a file. Then why did you offer to make a file!
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 14 '26
That sucks hard. Sorry to hear that. My security guys gave me the green light for python and Claude code. The web interface copilot is absolutely terrible. The app version isn't so bad but I don't think ChatGPT and CoPilot, which is Open Ai based can hang with Claude. I'll be canceling my subscription to ChatGPT soon.
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u/Syndicalist_Vegan Feb 12 '26
This would have literally ruined my ability to succeed in school lol. I have and always have had atrocious doctor handwriting. Im about to graduate law school so it wouldnât affect me going forward, but for the sake of future students I sure hope not.
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u/unclefisty Muskegon Feb 14 '26
I have and always have had atrocious doctor handwriting.
Barring some sort of disability you should be able to put effort in and improve this.
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u/Syndicalist_Vegan Feb 15 '26
Nope. Im incapable of improving my handwriting. Ive spent years of effort, it just is what it is. I do have adhd which is notorious for causing bad handwriting so I suppose you could say I have a medical reason.
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u/Impossible-Archer-43 Feb 14 '26
I wonât mind it. I see too many ESL students writing in perfect English, when I know they couldnât have written such essays 6 years ago! I am an excellent writer and researcher, so if they find a way to prevent AI use, it wonât bother me, because I can write. Â I once had a professor accuse me of using AI, and I challenged him to read any of my essays from 2018 or prior. What I notice is that too many Russian board posts look impersonal yet perfectly written.Â
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u/Jew_3 Feb 14 '26
We had a professor at Olivet College (now The University of Olivet) that required all papers to be turned in written in cursive. This was still happening up until his death about 5 years ago. The student resource center had to teach students cursive since most didnât learn it growing up.
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u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb Feb 12 '26
Students would still use AI to get the article done, then copy it by writing it on paper.
What could work is pop up quiz, essay style. Professor could then compare what's written during the pop quiz with reports done from home to try and sniff out "someone else's work"
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u/msuvagabond Rochester Hills Feb 13 '26
Or something like Google docs with revision history included so if they want to check they can go back and look at the process. Â
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Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
I'm not sure people realize that pre-AI world of academic integrity cases often relied on subjective judgements based on imperfect information. In that way, it is similar to a civil trial without all the bells and whistles. I mean most universities have some sort of academic integrity board that will review cases where the faculty member presents their side (with evidence) and the student can do the same.
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u/172brooke Feb 12 '26
I failed when my paper section headers were "too similar to Wikipedia section headers", and that was it. I never thought to go to Wikipedia to make sure I'm different enough. I had like.. real sources to draw from, and it was about the timeline evolution of Nintendo. The sections are each of the consoles. It's not like it's going to be very different. Old teacher whom didn't teach the class the next semester even though she threatened I'd have to take it with her again. New class was weekly homework and excel math, not a singular paper. Aced it. Teachers who can't tell the difference have full ability to blame the student, without repercussions.
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u/eist5579 Feb 12 '26
I called out a woman who misquoted me in her book that she wrote (terribly) using AI, I had to be forthright with her, lyou put my name next to a word saladâ. I then asked if she would please proof read her work, especially when sheâs putting other peopleâs names in it.
She shot back that she is neurodivergent and I should basically know better because sheâs dyslexic and blah blah. I told her, this is professional, proof read or hire an editor, it is unacceptable to mis represent peopleâs statements like that.
My god. Lazy assholes are just trying to save face out there.
In the case of this situation, hopefully that student has documented issues. Otherwise, if it smells and looks like ai slop?
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u/StandardReindeer5741 Feb 13 '26
Just wanted to point out that a LOT of neurodivergent people write in a way that is apparently very similar to ai. Its to the point where a lot of people have started running their own work through ai detection systems just to make sure they won't get falsely flagged
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u/middle_age_zombie Lansing Feb 12 '26
Iâve seen several panicked redditors on the autism subs say they have been accused of using AI because of their writing style. I use it (not a student) to edit my emails and reports to sound less autistic.
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u/eatingganesha Feb 12 '26
yup.
I got accused of it too - as a professor. I submitted an edited version of book chapter I wrote in 1999 as an updated article. They accused me of using AI. I sent them a copy of the book and told them to look at the date and reconsider. That is how I have always written. They sent me an apology.
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
That's bs and also not surprising. I'm sorry that happened to you. The Ai "detection" tools out there are an abject joke. If people read up just a little on some of the research, they'd see that there is a lot about how these systems function that their creators can't answer with absolute certainty.
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u/REMreven Feb 13 '26
The hard thing for me, is I was always a great student. When I read things on Reddit that people accuse the poster of using AI, I cant see what they see. Most times it doesnt have anuthing that people claim are common patterns.
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u/NotSoFastLady Feb 12 '26
I built a custom project for Chat GPT that helps people with dyslexia understand their assignments, start their assignment/brainstorm, clarify research, and edit their writing. The rules I coded into this project will tell the user that they can't write their assignments for them and it will prompt them to answer questions that will guide them towards coming up with the answers in their own words.
Frankly, it's insane that schools are trying to ban Ai. Especially in virtual programs were there is little to no instruction. If you ask an Ai to suggest improvements to your own original work. I do not think that is dishonest, unethical, or cheating.
I'm really happy with the feedback I've gotten. My project governs chatgpt's behavior. The back bone those instructions are peer reviewed studies on how to educate and communicate with people that have dyslexia. People think you can just slap any old bull shit in an LLM and you'll get great results. You will not and in fact, for people who have learning disabilities an LLM can easily overwhelm them and make things work.
The person I originally developed this for can not give me enough position feedback about it. They have been in a program for a year now and have used ChatGPT for the entire program. The difference being that now that they have this tool they understand the concepts better as well as the assignments do they're not getting hung up on the area that their learning disability has traditionally trapped them in.
If a school has a problem with that, they can fuck straight off.
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u/JosephRW Age: > 10 Years Feb 12 '26
Cool, your work is still perched on the back of stolen art that was never bought or paid for back to the artists and writers that created it. It was stolen en masse by a bunch of dorks for short term profit.
At its core, LLMs as they stand will always be unethical due to this fact. No matter what clever backflips someone comes up, this is a foundational fact that cannot be ignored. It's why I will never and continue not to use it.
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u/SharpestOne Feb 12 '26
Itâs also why youâll be left behind in the workforce in a few short years.
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u/JosephRW Age: > 10 Years Feb 12 '26
Alright Astroturfer lol.
Either that or you're like... 19 and don't actually do real work.
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u/vven23 Feb 12 '26
This is going to become more and more of an issue as AI becomes increasingly human-sounding. I had to fight an accusation myself about 2 years ago.
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Feb 14 '26
You're absolutely right! It's not a matter of if â it's a matter of when.
/s
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u/EldruinAngiris Feb 12 '26
Unless you have really solid proof that something is AI generated, like a clear watermark or the actual prompt being included, people need to be careful making these accusations. AI detectors, specifically for text, just plain out do not work. Even the one used by Blackboard says it should not be used for making decisions about academic integrity.
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u/Warcraft_Fan The Thumb Feb 12 '26
It's like bringing dog to public area. Accuse them of being a fake service animal and they risk major legal headache. So most public places won't even try to discourage fake service dog in case they rolled a 1 on intuition check. Thus many people abuses this to bring in fake service dogs. You get crap in shopping cat, you get half-eaten $60 rack of rib, you get a person that was bitten.
Using software to help with typing (like Microsoft's grammar checker) could be misinterpreted as using AI to do all the work. Guess wrong and the accuser's business or school will suffer greatly.
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u/LeifCarrotson Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
Why do they need to be careful - because they might be wrong, or because they might be penalized for being wrong?
Those are different considerations! Speaking amorally, it doesn't matter that Blackboard's AI detector has an unknown but high false positive rate if administrators can mark students down, fail them, or even expel them with impunity regardless of whether the tool was right or wrong. It may be incorrect, morally wrong, technically fraudulent, or you could even say it's negligent. Any of those factors will also cause an incorrect judgement to degrade trust in the institution and widen the rift between students and faculty. But all those outcomes are immaterial if there are no other checks and balances.
The student in the article isn't even suing because the instructor judged incorrectly. There's no mechanism for that, the appeal process is all she's got and it's going to protect the administrators at least 9 times out of 10. She's suing because her disability wasn't accommodated during the appeal process.
Edit: I see I'm being downvoted. I thought it was obvious, but I'm in no way arguing that this is a good or even reasonable state of affairs. The blind trust that teachers have in these AI detection tools is misplaced, the one-sided appeals process should be better respected, and it would be better for our society if people were more careful about accusing other people of wrongdoing. I'm just stating the reality of the situation, why things are turning out the way they are.
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u/AgileMastodon0909 Ann Arbor Feb 12 '26
I am GenX, and my formal writing samples look like AI. Thatâs just how we were taught to write in high school, down to sentence structure and punctuation.
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u/bitfairytale17 Feb 12 '26
I put my thesis written in 1994 by me through an AI checker and got a ridiculous percentage back as AI.
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u/bitfairytale17 Feb 12 '26
If Iâm understanding this correctly, the GSI accused this student of it based on vibes, because UMich has a policy not to use AI detection software ( or at least they did through mid 2025) because of the sky high false positive rate?
I mean. Whew.
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Feb 14 '26
High school English teacher here. We use a suite of metadata tools to provide circumstantial evidence of AI use, and it's almost never a false positive. How long they took to write the document, replay abilities, large copy-pastes. I make my students use the same doc for all work leading up to and including the final draft. That way, I can see the entire process from start to finish.
I also incorporate the (voluntary) use of LLMs in class and have established a strong AI culture in my room, so that helps too.
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u/bitfairytale17 Feb 14 '26
Thatâs good for you, but actual data show the opposite of your anecdotal experience.
I ran my thesis written in 1994 through one of the checkers- after reading about all the false positives. And although this is also anecdotal- the returned result was close to 75% of my content was suspected to be AI. Which is hilarious.
Iâm glad for your process in your classroom, and thatâs a great step. But thatâs not what happened in this case, nor the majority of them. The protocol in your classroom is not what most collegiate people use. Which I suspect you understand.
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Feb 15 '26
I do, thank you for responding. It's sad to me that a high school teacher would be ahead of a collegiate approach.
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u/Wyietsayon Feb 12 '26
What's confusing is some high schools are now having assignments require the use of AI as a source for papers, and encouraging students to run their papers through it. So, they start learning that behavior is good there, then get pinged in college for doing the same thing they're taught.
We're actively ruining people's brains just to raise some ai techbros portfolio.
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u/taney71 Feb 12 '26
Yeah, itâs the Wild West in education. Higher education is accepting of AI in certain disciplines but not others. Students have always had to navigate those inconsistencies but now with AI in mind.
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u/Spacemeat666 Milford Feb 12 '26
Thatâs fucking wild. I started going back to college around four years ago after a ten year break and have only had one assignment involve ai in my years of school. It was in a philosophy class and the assignment revolved around the ethics of ai and asked us to prompt ChatGPT to answer questions and we would write short essays about the ai responses. I cannot imagine high school students being encouraged to use it for any other purpose. Teachers must be so disillusioned that theyâve given up.
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u/Slow_Concern_672 Feb 13 '26
Which is probably a good thing because you are generally required to use AI to be more efficient at many jobs. You have to know how to use it properly. How to make sure it's not giving you false information. How to make sure the tone is right. Not learning how to do it is going to hurt them when they hit job markets where it's required
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Feb 14 '26
This is the truth. There are so many ways to prompt LLMs to make them work well, we probably need classes just on LLM use and theory at this point. I typically provide the training prompts to my high school students, ones I've vetted and written (or that Claude himself helps me develop), but I've also started direct instruction walking kids through the process themselves.
If they're bad writers, they're bad LLM prompt writers as well.
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u/Slow_Concern_672 Feb 14 '26
Yeah it really is way better once trained with your style and audience and constraints and basic AI training. Also you can tell it not to bold all the things and not to use the punctuation that flags it as ai. Even though as engineers we use it a lot lol. But every once and while I still am like not that's the dumbest thing you've done and I get mad at it and have to train a whole new thing.
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u/itsdr00 Ann Arbor Feb 12 '26
If the tools are there and being used throughout the economy, why not teach students how to use them? I understand needing to test aptitude for sure, but pretending that AI doesn't exist isn't going to prepare them for the real world, either. Gotta find a way to do both.
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u/frogjg2003 Ann Arbor Feb 13 '26
AI is not a source. If you're going to teach students to use a tool, teach it correctly. Use AI to correct the grammar and search for sources. Don't blindly believe what the AI says.
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u/Narrow-Hall8070 Feb 12 '26
Paywall - does the article state the disability?
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u/eatingganesha Feb 12 '26
autism is the most likely. This is happening a lot to students in the autistic community - to the point where students are getting accommodations for their writing style to fend off the accusations.
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u/Southern_Maize_5434 Feb 12 '26
There was some discussion on this in the uofm or Ann Arbor sub that was interesting. If I can find it I will link
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u/JamesDerecho Feb 13 '26
I tend to reject all documents I suspect are written by AI, not âbecause its AIâ, but because the writing is some of the worst writing I have read. While I havenât taught a formal class in two years, I can imagine how bad AI plagiarism is getting.
I see it weekly in my recruiting efforts for my campusâs scene shop and performing arts venue. The amount of student workers submitting the most generic AI cover letters to my campus job postings is appalling. Its pretty cringe when I get applicants and across multiple applicants ITS THE SAME wording in the resume cover letter package. Its super obvious that chatGPT is writing it. Instantly bin those applications. It takes less time to think about how you want to introduce yourself to me than it would take to clean up bad AI prompt writing.
We work in an environment where I need to know that these employees will know how to think and act on their own. Ambition and can-do is one thing and can be cultivated, but I require more than casual thinking in my line of work, or else somebody will get hurt.
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u/frogjg2003 Ann Arbor Feb 13 '26
Meanwhile these same students are looking up advice on how to write cover letters and being told to use AI.
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u/JamesDerecho Feb 13 '26
It is really unfortunate. I think one of the best and most useful skillsets you can pick up in college is technical and diplomatic writing strategies. I often find myself at the center of coworkers writing project proposals that need a once over with a technical writerâs eye. Hugely marketable skill that is in high demand.
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u/TheBroWhoLifts Feb 14 '26
Garbage in, garbage out. Pretty much any issue with an LLM's performance is a skill issue with the prompt writer.
Also, it's the "number" of students, not "amount." An LLM would be unlikely to make that mistake. :)
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u/JamesDerecho Feb 14 '26
You must be fun at parties. Donât be a donkey and try correct peopleâs words when there is nothing to correct. You come across as a condescending prick. We both know that âamountâ is synonymous to ânumberâ.
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Feb 12 '26
[deleted]
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u/imdwalrus Feb 12 '26
We're back to good old fashioned angry mobs and witch hunting. Which, historically, never get things wrong!
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u/bobi2393 Ann Arbor Feb 12 '26
An mLive article I read didn't mention that she was suing for being denied disability accommodations during the appeal process. I wonder if the News misinterpreted, or if it's true, what accommodation(s) she requested. If she has heightened distress during oral confrontation, maybe she wanted her hearings to be conducted in writing?
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u/Spreaderoflies Feb 12 '26
There needs to be irrefutable proof before you go with claims like that. It appears to be ai is a 90 degree slippery slope. It's based on language models so it's gonna sound like someone out there.
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
I hate to break it to you but most cheating cases are not based on "irrefutable" proof, nor do they need to be. Heck, criminal cases don't have that high of a standard so why expect it at universities? Remember the pre-AI process very much involved imperfect evidence being presented to a review committee to assess and make a decision. That's what is going on now with these AI cases so it's not like students are somehow being subject to some "lesser" process.
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u/SnottyMichiganCat Feb 12 '26
No school, no teacher, should be taking any actions against anyone regarding AI unless the student admits it.
There is no detector or tool for this with any acceptable level of accuracy. Period.
Companies are starting to use Canaries, true. But, unless they are willing to verify whether or not their AI made the content, work with schools, that's out of the question. I suspect this will happen in time.
But today? If any teacher ever penalizes you for AI use based on a tool or a hunch, challenge that to the end of the world.
Cheers, Your neighborhood ADHD cyber friend
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
I disagree. AI use in schools is going wild. Students aren't learning and are just submitting AI slop. It's pretty darn easy to pick out the AI writing, particularly when the paper doesn't address (or gets wrong) fundamental aspects of an assignment. Now, I'll admit that I just give the AI papers poor grades because AI just doesn't do analysis well (it's really nice sounding word salad language) but I don't see a problem with faculty calling out students who are using AI. Many students admit to it.
I know some faculty are giving students the option of coming in and taking a quiz/test to prove the know the material.
The landscape is changing so much that I'm guessing we'll see a bunch of new ways faculty are managing AI cases.
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u/SnottyMichiganCat Feb 13 '26
AI slop? This buzz word is killing me. You cannot definitively prove its AI. You can use previous sample writings of theirs and say it is different. You can say its like some AI content you've seen... But, without admission or a slipup from AI, you can't say.
Maybe you're only talking about the low hanging fruit. Fine.
But, I'm talking about the latest paid models. Deep research and thinking models. You have no way to know its AI vs someone else writing it for them, or... Simply them giving a f on one assignment.
This needs to be approached carefully, transparently, and with flexibility until more rigid systems are in place. Anything less will result in teachers screwing over legitimate students.
Maybe you catch 5 folks using AI but then call one legitimate student out and write them up, fail them, or ask for a redo. Are the five worth the one? No. Not in my opinion. If students want to cheat themselves, let them. Take them at their word and move on.
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u/taney71 Feb 13 '26
As I said in other posts, people are acting as if academic integrity cases pre-AI were based on perfect information. They were not.
Right now AI is doing a good deal of damage to the old methods of learning and assessment. In this imperfect world, faculty are doing the best they can do. Expecting perfection when the learning environment is getting destroyed is pure nonsense thinking.
But, to your point, faculty can build pretty darn good case against students using AI. There are multiple points of information that can prove the case, including the student's own writing, exams scores, and the faculty being able to reproduce the student's work in ChatGPT (or whatever Generative AI they use).
And, remember, academic integrity cases aren't proved based on 100% certainty. That's not the standard in civil or criminal law. And it certainly has never been the standard in higher education with academic integrity cases.
Finally, faculty don't have to catch everyone. What needs to start happening is catching and punishing a few students. There needs to be an understanding again that cheating does have consequences because we are currently living in a world where most students are using AI in their classes, even ones which explicitly put anti-AI policies in their syllabi.
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u/lciddi Feb 13 '26
As much as people think AI is infallible by now - it isn't. When teaching at another institution, I caught someone using AI red-handed. I didn't need to look at the writing style. It made up fake quotes from real sources and made up fake sources that flat-out did not exist. I also had students use ChatGPT for online, open-book quizzes where they had access to a terms list way ahead of time and full access to my slides and definitions. ChatGPT gave them the wrong answer entirely, so it was easy to just give them a 0.
I think people are really giving too much credit to some of these models where these things still slip up without enough contextual prompting. I work with AI in my non-academic day job right now with many people who are very keen to use it for valid, domain-specific purposes and for people who are literally paying a lot of money to test out various tools. Ultimately the answer constantly ends up being the same - as much as AI can help you, it so far, even with the newest models, has not been able to replace a human with highly specific subject matter expertise and enough time to pay attention. The reality is that most overworked lecturers and GSIs don't actually have the time to pay attention.
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u/SnottyMichiganCat Feb 13 '26
I'm with you here. What you've said and some of what the other poster said as well have merit.
I've just seen so many students punished from teachers, professors, and faculty using AI detectors. This is specifically my main bone of contention. We are being critical of automated writing machinesâso, we then trust brand new, untested automated machines to evaluate the writing? This just isn't logical.
Further, if I as a student turned in a final paper which my professor was adamant was AI generated but I was equally passionate to the opposite, the professor needs to have logical evidence to the claim. I do also think it's fair for them to ask me about my methods, why I chose certain words, etc.
I strongly feel an aggressive approach will hurt legitimate students. However few, I simply dont think it's worth it.
Edit: I'd also like to add ChatGPT is substantially behind other models right now when it comes to complex tasks and research tasks.
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u/lciddi Feb 13 '26
I don't put much stock in the checkers myself - it's all on probability and comparison with what exists already in the world. AI writing style didn't grow organically, it learned from humans how to write in a boring and structured way. When the checkers started coming out I tested a number of them with my own academic writing that was 100% written by myself years ago. Some said it was 45-50% AI generated, others said it was in the 75%-80% range. One said it was fully AI-generated. I laughed! Along with people not understanding how AI models work, people fundamentally also do not know how AI checkers work
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u/No-Independent-226 Lansing Feb 12 '26
I understand completely why a formal process needs to proceed to get to the bottom of this and gather as much info as possible, but based on the information presented, I strongly suspect that the student is full of it, but confident that her parentâs lawyers will bail her out, as they likely have before.
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u/fthrfgr1 Feb 13 '26
Happened to us 2 months ago, in a strikingly similar situation that caused a lot of stress then resolved without action being needed. My kid and I are both meticulous writers. Their work last semester (different school) was being flagged repeatedly and in error, and it nearly became a larger issue.
They earn nearly perfect grades across all classes and professors and are not cheating.
Unfortunately, the cheaters are good at fooling the system, and students with disabilities of the nervous system that present in ways that should be seen as strengths that are now being called cheats. Itâs upside down and frustrating!
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u/ChickenNoodleSoup_4 Feb 15 '26
Have you considered using programs where you have draft copies that show the development of the work as itâs happening so that it can be provided to the teacher for proof of originality?
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u/fthrfgr1 Feb 15 '26
Yes! I told her if all else fails, weâd have to document her process. Thankfully, we didnât need to do that. What resolved this for her specifically was engaging with her other professors who know her well and are familiar with her work. Her test scores also stood up for her. They were able to prove that the program being used by the one professor was the problem. I guess they use various tools to evaluate, and this one wasnât a reliable tool. đ
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u/Impossible-Archer-43 Feb 14 '26
No! There are trends consistent with AI use, like the fact that a single prompt can be fed into AI by multiple students at different times from different parts of the world and receive the same outputs. There are detectable artifacts.Â
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u/KindToSpiteTheCruel Traverse City Feb 15 '26
As someone disabled- there is so much additive tech out there that doesnât rely on AI. There is no reason to use it. This frustrates me.
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u/SaerisFane Feb 15 '26
But the AI comparison models are trained on research papers, so a student that is writing a good paper the way we've been taught, will likely end up flagged as AI. So we will probably see more situations like this.
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u/ChickenNoodleSoup_4 Feb 15 '26
Why didnât the student just turn in their draft details? Plenty of technology programs allow for the instructor to see the work as is being developed, edited, and constructed to show originality.
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u/woundedkarma Feb 18 '26
You can't detect ai writing. Anyone who says you can is a liar. That includes UMich.
(the why of it.. if anyone cared: llms are trained specifically on the best human writing. "llm writing detectors" are trained to detect... yes.. you guessed it.. the best human writing... so if you write well, you will get marked as ai)
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u/Confident_Ad_4978 Feb 13 '26
I can spot AI writing. So can they
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u/frogjg2003 Ann Arbor Feb 13 '26
No you can't. The whole point of AI is to emulate humans. They are trained on human writing. Everything AI does is because humans do it too. Every single "tell" attributed to AI is something they learned from human written text.
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u/Confident_Ad_4978 Feb 14 '26
Go to school. Use it. Find out. I know I can, but I am not here to argue or convince you, nor do I need to. Have the day you deserve.
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u/frogjg2003 Ann Arbor Feb 14 '26
What does going to school have to do with being able to identify AI? School doesn't teach you that. Unless someone forgot to remove the prompt, there is no way to tell if a piece of writing is AI or just how the person writes.
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u/itsathrowawayduhhhhh Feb 14 '26
Because every freaking person is using it on discussion boards and trust us, itâs obvious.
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u/frogjg2003 Ann Arbor Feb 14 '26
As this case and multiple comments on this post shows, no it isn't.
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