A Massachusetts couple claims that their son’s high school attempted to derail his future by giving him detention and a bad grade on an assignment he wrote using generative AI.
An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.
In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.
Yeah, I’m 100% with the school on this one.
Looks like the handbook does explicitly mention it:
From https://core-docs.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/4900/HHS/4719901/Student_Handbook_Code_Discipline_2024_2025.pdf
Apparently they added that after punishing the kid.
A better punishment would have been making him redo the assignment.
Seriously, this was not handled at all well by the teacher.
If that’s the case, then he shouldn’t have been punished. Regardless of people’s feelings about AI, imagine this were any other circumstance. “You did something that’s not against the rules but I don’t like, so I’m going to fail you and give you detention”. That’s a load of horseshit. Imagine they did the same thing if he had the paper transcribed through his speech. You don’t get to make up rules after the fact and then punish someone for them.
The kid had already previously been informed that using AI tools like this is considered academic dishonesty. The rules had been made clear to him before the assignment.
He already got away eays with a 65/100 instead of a 0.
I would consider excessive use of AI in this case as plagiarism.
The biggest issue here is the student cheating himself. You can’t learn if you lean on it too much.
A proper use case would be using an LMM like a tutor. “I have an assignment. Here is my essay. What other points can I make? I’m stuck here. How can I rephrase my point?” Vs “Do my homework for me”
Does adding it after the fact give ammo to the parents’ case?
Students were informed before the assignment, so he knew he shouldn’t have used it. This handbook is not some legal document or something so I don’t think the parents have a case. If anything the kid got away easy with a 65 instead of a 0.