Grammarly, the company behind the eponymous grammar and syntax program, recently announced that it's gotten smarter and can now provide “strategic suggestions” to its 30 million users. It may not be an innovation that helps the company.
As Grammarly gains more generative capabilities, its usefulness to students decreases as it exposes them to unnecessary disciplinary risks.
In a viral story, University of North Georgia student Marley Stevens was sentenced to probation for using Grammarly to write a criminal justice essay. Stevens said her professor accused her of “unintentionally cheating” on her academic work because she used the program to proofread her paper.
Ms. Stevens received a zero on the assignment, which she said put her scholarship at risk. Comments on Stevens' girlfriend's TikTok video indicate that she is not the only student who has been punished for using Grammarly.
Stevens' case illustrates the more murky world of using artificial intelligence in schools – using it as an aid or resource rather than a job replacement. Until now, discussions about the use of AI in academia have focused on the potential for plagiarism, the apparently indefensible act of simply representing an AI product as one's own work. Researchers at Stanford University say that concern is overblown.
My school, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, prohibits the use of generative AI.
What is considered cheating may vary by school
Grammarly wasn't necessarily generative in the way we think about this kind of intelligence. You cannot write student essays like you can with ChatGPT. But now, “strategic proposals” make the program more generative in nature, making it more likely to be subject to a general AI ban.
However, here's the problem. Many schools encourage and even pay to use Grammarly for their students. According to Grammarly, it is explicitly promoted by at least 3,000 educational institutions that have signed up for institutional accounts.
In Stevens' case, the University of North Georgia promoted Grammarly on its website, then took it down and put it back on its website.
High school students need help:Why the college application process doesn't work for students
Although individual schools should be allowed to create their own policies, we are moving toward a situation where behavior that is considered cheating will be allowed in one school and not another. Or one course and not another.
This is a problem because academic integrity is universal. Or at least it should be.
Whatever the rules are for using Grammarly, I'm going to follow them, but I find that my concerns about the kind of help Grammarly provides remind me of the debate over the use of calculators in school.
How is Grammarly different from a calculator or autocorrect?
In the 1970s, some educators and parents worried that calculators were replacing math lessons. Research shows they never were. It took 50 years, but calculators are now required in some courses and tests, and assistive technology doesn't necessarily replace basic teaching, but does the work for us. I know that's not the case.
We now prioritize mental agility and creativity over memorization. That's why some schools are doing away with spelling tests in favor of critical thinking.
Will my student loans be forgiven?Be prepared for disappointments and difficulties. The repayment grace period ends in September.
If anything, these devices and programs allow for deeper learning. The main reason for this is that it is used by students who are well past the age of receiving their first math functions and grammar lessons. If anything, Grammarly is a review of past grammar lessons.
Technically, autocorrect is a type of AI, but not using autocorrect for typo-corrected students is overkill, and these programs were created to meet the evolving needs of education. defeats the purpose of
Whether using Grammarly constitutes fraud is a multi-billion dollar question that remains unanswered. It's an ethical issue related to school finances. With Grammarly, a student may lose their scholarship, and the school will not refund tuition if the student is expelled and the student may owe student loans. In addition, there is the opportunity cost of being accused of wrongdoing.
As Marlee Stevens' fight continued, Grammarly donated $4,000 to GoFundMe to support her education.
But beyond Stevens' case, technology companies that offer programs to students are also wondering how making their products more generative creates even more problems for the students who use them. must be taken into consideration. And teachers and schools that ban such programs need to think about what kind of learning they want their students to experience.
Ultimately, in all fields, not just education, AI is an example of how to ensure that our technology does not outpace our integrity or call into question our honest work. If we don't, we could all be cheating. Even worse, you may not be learning as much as you could.
William Tan is a high school senior at Deerfield Academy and serves on the school's honorary board.