U of M Dearborn embraces AI, opts out of detection software
DEARBORN, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - While the latest artificial intelligence tools have many schools searching for a new way to keep students honest, the University of Michigan in Dearborn says they are willing to do without a new AI cheating detector software.
"We always been hearing, AI is coming. AI is coming. It's no longer, AI is coming. It's now, AI is here," said campus coordinator for digital education Christopher Casey.
Casey says some fear artificial intelligence and its capabilities, but educators at their Dearborn campus are embracing it.
"We think students are probably going to be using this in the real word so we want to try to expose them to it as part of their education," he said.
However, what Casey says the campus is shutting down is the idea of AI detectors.
"I think we are somewhat taking a unique approach. We at University of Michigan Dearborn have opted out of that feature," he said.
It is a feature built to detect student writing generated by ChatGPT, used to help complete students' work.
As Casey says, he believes curbing the way assignments, projects or even tests are given in the classroom is the right way to go, rather than the fear of wrongly accusing someone of plagiarism.
"We don't have any way to know is this the one percent false positive. Is this really written by AI? We don't want to put our students or our faculty in this situation where we relying on what is essentially a black box of technology. It's not what we want to do as a campus," Casey says.
And while Casey says he'll continue to study what software the campus may be comfortable with using in the future, he says educators at U of M Dearborn are focused on how AI, like ChatGPT, can positively impact student learning.
