Students are relying so much on AI that universities are being forced to fundamentally rethink how they grade their work.
England’s higher education regulator, the Office for Students, is warning universities that they may have to replace traditional take-home essays and open-book exams with supervised assessments that prevent students from relying on artificial intelligence to do their work.
AI detection tools are too unreliable to consistently determine whether students used the technology, the OfS said in a report published on Wednesday.
Indeed, studies have shown that people have difficulty distinguishing AI-generated images from reality, while commercial AI detection tools used to assess handwriting are far from perfect and can produce false positives. AI systems are also becoming more sophisticated, making reliable detection increasingly difficult.
Rather than trying to detect AI use, universities may have to abandon some assessment formats, particularly “unsupervised and uncontrolled formats” like take-home essays and open-book exams which, according to the report, make up a “significant proportion of assessments used in the sector”.
“At our school, I think we realize that a number of our assessments may be unfit for purpose and that the widespread use of AI may make our assessment of students almost impossible in some areas,” said one academic staff member interviewed for the report.
Universities are increasingly shifting to in-person written and oral exams, making it much more difficult for students to outsource their work to AI, according to the report. He also points to process-based assessments, which assess students on multiple checkpoints, such as a literature review, rather than just on their final essays.
The report illustrates how widespread the use of AI has become in universities and why educators are increasingly faced with the need to fundamentally rethink how student performance is assessed, sometimes with unintended consequences.
“We also heard concerns that some secure assessments, such as closed-book exams, bear little resemblance to activities students will perform in professional environments, and concerns that their structured format and reward of long-term memory could disproportionately disadvantage certain groups of students, such as students with disabilities,” the report said.
But as long as students believe that AI can help them get better grades for a fraction of the effort, they will likely feel compelled to use it, even if they think it harms their learning. There is also concern that when AI use goes unnoticed, students who can afford to pay for expensive, paid AI tools may get better grades than students who don’t use AI or who use it but have to rely on cheaper or free versions of the same models.
“Our research shows that many students now view AI as the most effective route to a high grade, and students may feel disadvantaged if they do not use AI,” the report said.
The problem and the backlash are global. Last September, New York City banned generative AI for students through eighth grade and sharply limited its use in high schools. Norway introduced similar restrictions in June, with the rules coming into force in August.
Some tech giants have responded to concerns about student learning with new AI features. OpenAI, for example, introduced ChatGPT for Teens, which includes a study mode intended to guide students through problems rather than just providing answers. But a Common Sense Media report last month found that these protections were easy to circumvent, including through an option for students to request full answers. Another assessment by the same organization found that Google Search’s AI mode performed “100% of the homework” tested by searchers, sometimes providing incorrect information with unwarranted confidence.
There are also concerns that using AI for school work could become a gateway to over-reliance on chatbots, particularly for emotional support.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, a North Carolina couple alleged that their 13-year-old daughter’s addiction to Google’s Gemini turned into a “life-threatening obsession” after the model allegedly began helping her plan her suicide. According to the lawsuit, the victim only had access to Gemini AI through a school-provided Chromebook laptop.
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