Why Do We Need to Rethink University Codes of Ethics?

Artificial Intelligence production has advanced by leaps and bounds this past year. Activities that we thought were unique to human capacity, such as painting and creative writing, are being produced by machines attaining a level of quality suitable for university-level tasks. University of Virginia Honor Committee Members met at the end of January to discuss the implications of the fraudulent use of technology in the academic trajectory. The consensus at UVA and many other universities is that detecting which work is done by students and which by a bot like ChatGPT will become harder to distinguish. 

ChatGPT is a chatbot language model based on GTO-3.5 developed by OpenAI. It can create dialogues, carry a conversation, and interact similarly with people. This type of system can predict the next word in a series. This faculty, reinforcing learning nourished by users’ feedback, is why it effectively generates better responses each time. But what does this mean for the future of honor codes and plagiarism prevention in universities?

The biggest concern of students is that there is currently no 100% foolproof method to determine if a work was written in its entirety by a student. Gabrielle Bray, chair of the UVA committee and fourth-year student, commented, “[The programs] tell you that it’s 99.9 percent confident or 98 percent confident – the problem is whether or not we’re willing to find somebody guilty based on 99 percent confidence rate,” Lin said. “[The only way] is to create another AI to discriminate between the real and the generated, and that takes a very long time.”

Kevin Lin, a student representative and engineering graduate added that the biggest dilemma would be finding someone guilty of such a grave offense when there is a margin of error of 1%. Student groups in charge of maintaining a standard of academic honesty are also leaning on teachers. Students at the University of Virginia are taking notions from teachers like Evan Pivonka, an advisor to the Policy Committee, who urged universities to set expectations regarding artificial intelligence as a tool and the system of school assignments. 

“There must be precise guidance from teachers explaining what an acceptable use of these new resources is and what is not,” Pivonka commented. He explained that it would be a work of negotiation, flexibility, and learning among student leaders and university teachers.

It’s not the technology; it’s the focus.

A recurring problem for people who ensure a standard of integrity in academia is that every time a technology appears that facilitates plagiarism or dishonesty, the entire body of higher education goes into crisis. If university codes of ethics have such fragile conceptual foundations, these bases should be rethought. 

Thomas Gift, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the US Policy Center at the University of London, and Julie Norman, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, shared their views on the topic for Times Higher Education. The academicians argued that most higher education institutions have ethics codes that only prohibit dishonesty, plagiarism, and misconduct. They focus on punishing students’ wrongdoing rather than on motivating an ethical perspective.

There is another principle from which a code of honor can start, one that is directed less to punishments after wrongdoing and begins by awakening in students a sense of dignity and respect for themselves, their work, their peers, and their teachers. Developing such a code is challenging; however, the only way to reduce violations when a new technological resource arrives is to teach students to reflect on their professional and academic obligations and the benefit and development they receive by fulfilling them.

Just as we have seen the value of involving students in their learning, we can leverage this idea to let them lead in forming a sense of ethics based on trust rather than punishment. The outcome could be much more favorable than a punitive system.

What do you think of the current situation of universities facing the advance of artificial intelligence? Do you think we are in a moment of crisis? What solutions would you find relevant to ensure the effectiveness of codes of ethics in higher education? Let us know in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0