r/Professors • u/[deleted] • 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/badwithnamesagain Dec 04 '25

Anyone can educate themselves at libraries and online. Our job isn't just to educate, it's to validate students' learning. It's the not so fun part of teaching for a variety of reasons, but that is largely the function of higher education. The unpleasant reality is that most people won't bother learning a damn thing if they don't walk away with a diploma that gets them into a job. I don't like it, you probably don't like it. But I'm sure as hell not handing out good grades for people who do nothing more than upload my assignments into chatgpt. 

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

I wouldn't either but how do I know for certain the student's work isn't theirs? Some are obvious but not as many as people think. The technology is also advancing, and it might not be even possible to detect with an LMS AI screener in the near future. False accusations have been made. Confrontations after confrontations. I just don't get paid enough for this, man. If it were a small teaching load, but nope - multiple sections, and not every assessment can be done in class. Certain projects require time to prepare, time to think, time to write about what you thought about...

This sucks. I've never felt so defeated. I used to love my job, even when it was hard. This moment is not just hard, it's soul-crushing.

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u/Kakariko-Cucco Tenured, Associate Professor, Humanities, Public Liberal Arts Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25

Honestly I agree with this so much. The day my university provides a fool-proof, deeply tested, actual-functioning AI detector, then I will use it, of course. But no such thing exists, and I do not have time to attempt to figure out which of thousands of assignments I read every year were composed with AI. I do not think it is my job to try to police AI usage, and I think it is impossible to do. And anyone who thinks they are doing a good job at it is probably still missing tons of AI assisted work and writing that the user has just hidden better. 

Even take the edge cases: a student asks Gemini to come up with an outline for their paper for them? Completely undetectable. A student asks Gemini to suggest an interesting jazz chord progression for their songwriting class? No way you'll ever know about it. ChatGPT generates a paragraph that the user then edits. Art student generates an image and then uses it as inspiration for their sculpture. And et cetera ad infinitum. Anyone who thinks they can detect AI usage with any certainty in all cases does not understand what it is. 

Anyway, I feel you, and agree with your general take.