Professors' use of Al upsets some students

Students call it hypocritical. A senior at Northeastern University demanded her tuition back. But instructors say generative Al tools make them better at their jobs, writes Kashmir Hill from New York

- Kashmir Hill

n February, Ella Stapleton, then a senior at Northeastern University, was reviewing lecture notes from her organisational behaviour class when she noticed something odd. Was that a query to ChatGPT from her professor?

Halfway through the document, which her business professor had made for a lesson on models of leadership, was an instruction to ChatGPT to “expand on all areas. Be more detailed and specific.” It was followed by a list of positive and negative leadership traits, each with a prosaic definition and a bullet-pointed example.

Ms Stapleton texted a friend in the class. “Did you see the notes he put on Canvas?” she wrote, referring to the university's software platform for hosting course materials. “He made it with ChatGPT.”

“OMG Stop,” the classmate responded. “What the hell?”

Ms Stapleton decided to do some digging. She reviewed her professor's slide presentations and discovered other telltale signs of AI: distorted text, photos of office workers with extraneous body parts and egregious misspellings.

She was not happy. Given the school’s cost and reputation, she expected a top-tier education. This course was required for her business minor; its syllabus forbade “academically dishonest activities,” including the unauthorised use of artificial intelligence or chatbots.

“He's telling us not to use it, and then he’s using it himself,” she said.

Ms Stapleton filed a formal complaint with Northeastern’s business school, citing the undisclosed use of Al as well as other issues she had with his teaching style, and requested reimbursement of tuition for that class. As a quarter of the total bill for the semester, that would be more than $8,000.