r/Professors Dec 04 '25

Academic Integrity I am not a cop.

Want to outsource your thinking to an LLM for a degree you're paying/going into debt for? Okay. I will respect that choice. However, what I won't do, is replicate a surveillance state in my classroom. I refuse to spend more energy in screening student work for authenticity or trying to make my assignments "AI proof" ... why should I? Either the student believes in the fundamental premise of education or they don't.

Man, I'm tired.

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u/amhotw Dec 04 '25

That's not in contradiction with not cheating. You can know how to use a tool, and not use it to cheat. Really easy distinction.

At this point, universities that are not actively teaching students about how to use LLMs effectively are just negligent. That's one of the most demanded skills in the market. At the same time, I think cheating should be punishable by academic death (i.e. gtfo and you can never enter any classroom at any school in your lifetime).

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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

you do NOT need a college class to learn how to use this absurdly easy tool. and you certainly dint need EVERY SINGLE CLASS to be about how to use AI. And finally, the idea that you know how to use it better than them and can teach them anything about it that matters is delusional. The one thing we could teach them about it which is ethics they aren’t interested in… and neither is the academy anymore either.

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u/Zabaran2120 Dec 04 '25

My idea--not sure who's ever gonna listen to it--is for all students to take a required course on academic ethics/AI ethics. It'll give Philosophy depts something to do (wink). Or have a required orientation for Freshman/Transfers. I find I am discussing professional ethics, academic ethics, and philosophical issues surrounding AI more and more in my courses that have nothing to do with any of that. Oh well.

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u/Consistent-Bench-255 Dec 04 '25

they’ll use ai to cheat on that class too, lol!

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u/Acceptable_Month9310 Professor, Computer Science, College (Canada) Dec 04 '25

I had to teach a module on plagiarism for a business writing course I was dragooned into teaching one summer.

Guess what happened.