Australian universities return to pen and paper after students caught cheating with AI

Australian university students will be in for a shock next semester after some of the country’s most important institutions added new rules that will bring back pen and paper. 

Universities will be going back to a more conventional style of writing exams and assessments amid fears of cheating according to a recent Guardian article. 

“The Group of Eight leading universities,” wrote journalist Caitlin Cassidy, “said they had revised how they would run assessments this year due to the emergent technology.” 

Chief Executive of the Group of Eight Dr. Matthew Brown noted in an interview with the Guardian that the universities he represented were looking to be proactive in tackling the use of artificial intelligence in student examinations and assessments. 

“Our universities have revised how they will run assessments in 2023, including supervised exams … greater use of pen and paper exams and tests … and tests only for units with low integrity risks,” Dr. Brown said. 

“Assessment redesign is critical, and this work is ongoing for our universities as we seek to get ahead of AI developments,” Dr. Brown added. 

According to the Guardian article, a spokesperson for one of the universities was able to confirm that some students are already using online artificial intelligence programs to do some of their assigned coursework. 

“People are already using it to submit essays,” said Professor Toby Walsh. 

Walsh is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales and explained in his interview with The Guardian that school officials shouldn’t have been surprised by the use of artificial intelligence among its students.

“We should’ve been aware this was coming,” Walsh told The Guardian, “and we do tend to sleepwalk into the future.”

“But it’s a step-change – it’s accessible, it’s got a nice interface and it’s easy to play with,” Walsh added. 

The major concern among those who know seems to be in the use of artificial intelligence technologies like Chat GPT. 

“We are concerned about the emergence of increasingly sophisticated text generators, most recently Chat GPT, which appear capable of producing very convincing content and increasing the difficulty of detection,” said Flinders University deputy vice-chancellor Professor Ramy Lawson. 

Chat GPT is an artificial language program that simulates human conversation according to Forbes Arianna Johnson, and it has the ability to produce both simple and complex text based on a prompt from users. 

“Most notably, ChatGPT has been able to generate intricate Python code and write college-level essays when given a prompt,” Johnson wrote in a December 2022 exposè on the technology. 

Unfortunately for some students, Chat GPT does have its drawbacks. The artificial intelligence program can only write about subjects before 2021 and it does have a tendency to produce incorrect answers according to Johnson. But that hasn’t stopped students in Australia from using technology to help in completing their homework.