BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) — Some University at Buffalo students are pushing back against an AI software tool some professors are using to check the accuracy of their academic work. Students say Turnitin is flawed and accuse them of cheating.
7 News Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley met with a student who started a change.org petition calling on UB to disable the AI detection.
"The software just isn't good enough. I don’t know if it'll ever be good enough,” remarked Kelsey Auman, UB medical student.
University at Buffalo medical student Kelsey Auman is leading the charge, asking UB professors to stop using Turnitin software, setting up this change.org petition calling for UB to "disable" it.
The software has been around for a few years to help make sure students are not committing plagiarism. But for Auman and some of her classmates. It said they cheated on their class work at the school of public health.
"I had three assignments dating back to February. I was not told about it until April that I had problems with these three assignments,” explained Auman.
The student says the software isn't trained to detect artificial intelligence and creates a “false positive” when reviewing human writings.
Auman tells me she never uses AI for her schoolwork.
"My assignments were, I believe, 60% AI, 67% AI, and then 97% AI, and so I didn't find this out until I met with my professor. It wasn't anything that was supposed to be prior, and I didn't use AI, so then it becomes, how do you prove a negative, right? Which is – I think where we're all kind of struggling here,” Auman noted.
So, the UB student had to scramble to show that she never cheated. She shared with me screenshots that she gave her professor to prove the path of her browser history she conducted for her research.
"Attempt to prove my innocence – if I hadn't had that, I don't really know what I would have done,” reflected Auman. “I’m picking something I’m passionate about, that I care about, and why would I cheat about that because I chose it, because I want to learn about it?"
UB sent me a statement saying, in part it does not rely “solely” on this AI tool when trying to determine alleged dishonesty in academic work.
"As a leader in academic integrity in higher education, UB provides students with ample information and support for meeting the university’s academic-integrity expectations. That includes a course for new students, student ambassadors and peer-to-peer education, as well as recommended syllabi language for instructor use.
How does the university handle situations where a student's work is flagged as AI detected?
Due to federal privacy laws protecting student academic records, the university cannot confirm or comment on specific cases of academic dishonesty.
However, generally speaking, when an instance of suspected or alleged academic dishonesty by a student arises, it is resolved according to the posted procedures, which includes due process for the student, a right to appeal and remediation for first-time offenders.
Given that some detection services have reported false positives, how does the university avoid accidentally ensnaring the wrong students?
To ensure fairness, the university does not rely solely on AI-detection software when adjudicating cases of alleged academic dishonesty. To reach our standard of preponderance of evidence, instructors must have additional evidence that a student used AI in an unauthorized way.
It is important to note that while UB makes AI-detection software available to assist instructors with determining authenticity and originality of student work for written assignments, the university does not rely solely on AI-detection software when adjudicating cases of alleged academic dishonesty.
Regarding our evaluation of Turnitin and other academic integrity tools:
As technology evolves and the use of AI continues to expand for both faculty and students, all software made available to instructors is thoroughly vetted, monitored and regularly evaluate."
University at Buffalo
The UB statement went on to say, "When an instance of suspected or alleged academic dishonesty by a student arises, it is resolved according to the posted procedures, which include due process for the student, a right to appeal and remediation for first-time offenders."
Auman was successful in proving she didn't cheat and graduated last Thursday from the UB School of Public Health – a victory lap for now, but Auman hopes this doesn't happen again as she continues in her medical academics at UB.
