A A few weeks ago, Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic in political science at Macquarie University, wrote an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on the increasing use of AI chatbots by students to write their essays.
In it, he expressed concern that universities do not have the essential skills needed to fulfill their roles of qualified lawyers, nurses, financial advisers, engineers and teachers. If so, the social consequences are obvious.
Not everyone in the university department agreed, and the University of Western Sydney’s pro-vice-chancellor for quality and integrity, Professor Keith Ellis, wrote a dissenting opinion.
There was one problem though. Ellis’s piece was written by AI – it was not released to the newspaper. Readers spotted stories of the AI phrase, and social media lit up with negative comments.
Ellis defended his opinion by saying it was written “with AI”, not by AI. From the university’s perspective, Ellis is entitled to use AI. A spokesperson for the university acknowledged that Copilot prepared the initial drafts and provided editing, organization and language refinement. The university did not apologise, arguing that his use of AI was sophisticated, appropriate and reflected his own thinking, ideas and opinions.
This security is flawed. Most readers don’t just read opinion pieces for a filtered view; For that, a bullet point list is sufficient. An opinion piece is an exercise in the art of persuasion. We read to weigh the writer’s insights, appreciate their prose, and ultimately consider their specific points. The writer has the power to influence policy and decision making.
Every reader should be informed about what they are reading whether or not it was written by a supposed author. For me, if informed, I would choose not to read an article or book written by an AI. Others may be happy to do so; That is their right. The key is to inform the reader in advance.
The next issue is what does it mean for an article to be human written or not. It is clear to me. AI can be used to research facts and test ideas, perform menial tasks such as spell-checking, grammar-checking, designing tables of contents, and designing bibliographies.
But AI should not write sentences and paragraphs.
At my company, Proudly Human, we call these boundaries De minimis standards.
Universities should accept De minimis standards. Standards should be specific rules rather than policy statements, so that there is no argument about what is acceptable and what is not.
Without these conditions, an AI-generated article might prompt someone else to use AI to generate a response, and so on it goes. Soon we will discover that human authorship is not just sliding down a slippery slope, but jumping off a cliff and becoming irrelevant.
SMH and The Age responded by taking down Ellis’ piece and saying that new contributors would be asked to guarantee that AI was not used to write or create future articles. Such a policy is welcome. Most importantly, these and other mastheads should be encouraged to publish them De minimis standards.
If some contributors do not adhere to the standards, formal procedures such as technical verification of the human rights of each article should be implemented.
As a former university chancellor I am in touch with the department. I know universities are well-intentioned and working to integrate AI into teaching and learning while ensuring learning outcomes are achieved. However, they have approached the problem with nothing like the speed with which students have adopted AI tools.
An example is the Castlereagh report released earlier this year by representatives of most Australian universities and several academic associations. It clearly articulates how AI will impact teaching and learning, and discusses goals and approaches to prepare our students for an “AI-transformed future,” but nowhere does it propose specific rules or a quick timeline.
Specific rules are required. The future of AI has arrived. Now is the time to act by adopting concrete principles for acceptable AI use to ensure that articles, essays and papers purportedly written by academics and students are not subcontracted to AI and are unequivocally written by those humans.
My final words: AI had no role in drawing or writing this opinion piece.
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