It’s only nine months since ChatGPT was launched, and it has changed our world.  This is only the beginning of the enormous changes this technology will bring. For a while, I was saving articles about artificial intelligence’s potential impact so that I could think about how those of us who weren’t born with cell phones in our hands and TikTok in our heads could adapt to this new reality.  But I couldn’t keep up with the deluge of information.

One important concern about this new technology is how easy it would be for students to do assignments with the help of artificial intelligence.  I went to my favorite source of student views—my about-to-be-a-high- school-junior-grandson Grady for his view on this subject. 

Here’s what I learned:  There are no perfect solutions (as yet) for detecting this kind of AI-sourced plagiarism.  But there is some help.  There are websites that can detect whether writing is original.  However, they have mistakenly identified original writing as copied so they are not perfect.  They will get better.

It seems that schools are scrambling to come up with a policy.  Some teachers seem more concerned than others. It can’t be easy to develop a straightforward policy for a huge school system. 

One possible solution would be to have writing assignments completed in the classroom.  (I suggested to a college sophomore I know that perhaps bluebooks would make a comeback. She did not know what a bluebook is!)  Or have the assignments be about an experience that only the student could know.

Grady reminds me that there has always been cheating. 

ChatGPT just makes it easier.