There used to be a joke in academia:
A student quotes an author, who cited another author, who also quoted someone else— from an untraceable source.
Now, here is the modern version:
A student declared his assignment free of artificial intelligence (AI), but unknowingly cited authors who had quoted AI-generated content.
Some argue that AI is a “danger” to students’ academic development, especially when clear, practical guidelines are yet to be formulated.
As a college student (who used AI as well), I may not be the best person to debate policies, but I can speak about the confusion and stress from current regulations.
How pure is “pure human work”?
Even if I don’t personally use AI in my assignments, can I guarantee the articles I cite weren’t written with AI’s involvement?
It’s like tracing the origin of food poisoning—it could be the kitchen, the factory, the delivery truck, or even the farm.
AI bits might be buried deep in the sources I referred to, even worse when the authors dishonestly concealed AI presence in their works.
AI use versus privacy
Some institutions now require students to submit links to their AI chats. While I see the intent—checking on how students engineer their AI prompts— sharing links to the full conversations feels like a privacy invasion.
To me, it's like handing over my entire WhatsApp chat history.
Discarded ideas and awkward early drafts should remain private. Wouldn’t screenshots of relevant extracts be enough?
Involuntary encounter with AI
I have experienced the case where I searched for keywords on Chrome, the first result that popped up was a key point summary tailored by Gemini AI.
Because the AI summary was so precise and sharp, I can't help but take it as the springboard to start my work.
Even if I don’t CTRL+C and CTRL+V from the Gemini piece, is it still counted as AI usage for it deeply inspired my assignment direction?
How long until institutions catch up?
As the prestigious institutions standing at the frontmost of the intellectual field, it is an irony that academia still struggles to find its response to the new wave of intelligence, the rise of the artificial ones.
I wouldn’t suggest absolute freedom nor total prohibition for AI usage in academia, but the pain point is the lack of a set of standardized and, more importantly, practical regulations.
Hoh Chee Meng (messihoh2003@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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