Student Blog: Academic Integrity and AI

Academic integrity is an interesting topic to talk about because it’s a little hard to define. What exactly is academic integrity? Not cheating on your tests? Working hard? Doing your own work? It’s not really something that I think about regularly, and I’(M) Willing to bet that most college students feel the same. 

Funny enough, this topic came up in the last week of my university writing seminar. We were nearly done with our papers (mine was on BAD CINDERELLA’S social media marketing) and had spent the past few days discussing a variety of topics unrelated to the course. So, I sat down in my usual seat, the teacher took attendance, and then asked everyone who knew what Chat GPT was to raise their hand.

Every hand flew up.

My teacher went on, talking about appropriate and inappropriate uses of Chat GPT. She asked us to come up with our own examples and post them online, before we went through them together and debated which category they fell under. 

“I assume you’ve all used it at least once,” my teacher then said, before opening her mouth to continue.

It was then that I spoke up. “Actually, I’ve never used it.”

I certainly know what Chat GPT is, because it’s become so widely known. I’ve heard a lot about it, what it can do, and why I should use it. But I’ve never felt the urge to test it out. In fact, I can pin down exactly why I’ve never used Chat GPT.

When I first found out about Chat GPT, someone came to me and claimed that the AI could write a book. Knowing myself, I’m sure my reaction was something along the lines of, “good luck with that.” As an author, I was offended that a computer program could do something I spend months working on. I didn’t believe that it could actually write a good quality book, and I don’t think I will until I see it. But I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want to have anything to do with that. So I stayed away.

My dislike for Chat GPT doesn’t fall under the exact definition of academic integrity. I maintain my academic integrity in part by my disdain for AI, but I’d consider it more to be personal integrity rather than academic integrity. I define integrity as being true and honest to yourself in all aspects, academic included. It may be a silly reason to avoid Chat GPT, but at the end of the day, it makes for a great story. 

And I can tell it with integrity.