It was meant to serve only as an introduction, yet the audacity of her students to cheat right here particularly astonished this ethics professor.
What did the students do? Megan Fritts works as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock and she didn’t ask much of her students: Write a short text about yourselves and your expectations for this course
. Sounds simple, yet the students cheated. They used the AI ChatGPT
to write the essay. When confronted about it, they confessed it out loud according to Fritts.
When Megan Fritts took to X to express her astonishment, she experienced both support and backlash. However, the situation takes on a more specific note when it becomes clear what the course was about. The situation has been reported by Business Insider.
ChatGPT fits perfectly into the course
What was the theme of the event? Fritts’ course dealt with ethics and technology. Hardly anything in modern IT technology currently touches this field as closely as ChatGPT does. And the students even engaged with the technology called ChatGPT beyond the simple introductory assignment: They had the AI generate questions for them to ask in class.
Is anyone defending the students? Yes, there are some voices on X under her post that label Fritts’ assignment as a waste of time and deny it any value as a university assignment. She responded to Business Insider by referring to the many students from other disciplines. A lot of students from unrelated fields come into courses like this, so she is very interested in what they expect from their time there.
Far more than a reprimand from his professor must this student applicant in Turkey endure, as he faces draconian penalties. The applicant for entry into the Turkish university system attempted to cheat during a state examination – a very foolish idea: For his attempt at cheating with a camera, phone, and AI failed, but the police were quite impressed.
