Universities have an 'archaic view' of AI

Kaustubh Shakkarwar sued Jindal Global Law School over AI use and allegations of plagiarism in an exam. He sought rules for AI in academia. Here's how that case originated

- Sheena Sachdeva

In May 2024, Kaustubh Shakkarwar, LLM student at Jindal Global Law School, appeared for an endterm exam for the paper on "Law and Justice in a Globalising World". His programme was in blended-learning mode a mix of online and in-person classes and he took the assessment as a "take-home exam. A few weeks later, his answers had been referred to an internal "Unfair Means Committee" (UMC); a tool had said 88% of his answers were Al-generated.

This would lead to one of the first lawsuits related to the use of artificial intelligence in academia in India. That said, no judicial discourse on AI in universities would emerge from it. While originally failing, Shakkarwar took a re-exam in August months before he filed the lawsuit and cleared it. The High Court of Punjab and Haryana ultimately dismissed the case since he had already cleared.

From the perspective of OP Jindal Global University of which JGLS is a unit the matter ended with the re-exam and the court order. From Shakkarwar's perspective, the issue is more complex. He denies using AI to write his exam and challenges the findings of the plagiarism and AI detection tool, Turnitin, which reported the 88% AI content. The UMC inquiry and the allegation of cheating rankle but, at the same time, he maintains that universities will have to contend with AI sooner or later. To get to the bottom of the issue with his answers and also because others were in the same boat as him, he sued the university in November.

"Experts are saying that a debate has started in this case regarding the usage of artificial intelligence tools. While the world and AI technology are moving super fast, AI will be part of our lives in every aspect, and academia will be a part of it. But for universities to say that AI cannot be used in academia, is a very archaic view," said the 30 year-old.

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