School Did Nothing Wrong When It Punished Student For Using AI, Court Rules 40
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal court yesterday ruled against parents who sued a Massachusetts school district for punishing their son who used an artificial intelligence tool to complete an assignment. Dale and Jennifer Harris sued Hingham High School officials and the School Committee and sought a preliminary injunction requiring the school to change their son's grade and expunge the incident from his disciplinary record before he needs to submit college applications. The parents argued that there was no rule against using AI in the student handbook, but school officials said the student violated multiple policies.
The Harris' motion for an injunction was rejected in an order (PDF) issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials "have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law."
"On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris' son, referred to by his initials] had cheated," Levenson wrote. "Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants' considerable discretion in such matters." "On the evidence currently before the Court, I detect no wrongdoing by Defendants," Levenson also wrote. "The manner in which RNH used Grammarly -- wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted -- powerfully supports Defendants' conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion," Levenson wrote. While "the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced, as there is no discernible pedagogical purpose in prompting Grammarly (or any other AI tool) to generate a script, regurgitating the output without citation, and claiming it as one's own work," the order said.
Levenson concluded with a quote from a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that said the education of youth "is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges." According to Levenson, "This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor. The public interest here weighs in favor of Defendants."
The Harris' motion for an injunction was rejected in an order (PDF) issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials "have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law."
"On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris' son, referred to by his initials] had cheated," Levenson wrote. "Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants' considerable discretion in such matters." "On the evidence currently before the Court, I detect no wrongdoing by Defendants," Levenson also wrote. "The manner in which RNH used Grammarly -- wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted -- powerfully supports Defendants' conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion," Levenson wrote. While "the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced, as there is no discernible pedagogical purpose in prompting Grammarly (or any other AI tool) to generate a script, regurgitating the output without citation, and claiming it as one's own work," the order said.
Levenson concluded with a quote from a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that said the education of youth "is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges." According to Levenson, "This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor. The public interest here weighs in favor of Defendants."
How stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The manner in which RNH used Grammarly -- wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted -- powerfully supports Defendants' conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion
It's pretty incredible that a High School student is so stupid as to not at least re-word what the LLM provided. Never mind the cheating aspect of what he did, although that's bad enough. But that degree of witlessness, at that age, does not bode well for him being able to function in any job requiring intellectual sophistication, analytical ability, or even just basic common sense.
Additionally, those lawsuit-filing parents need to take a good long look in the mirror, get a fucking clue, and ask themselves if their precious bundle of joy came out of the womb with such intellectual deficits or if their parenting was simply that bad.
This kid may be salvageable, but Mom and Dad need to stop enabling their son and get him some help that doesn't come from a lawyer or from an LLM being used as a substitute for thinking and learning.
Re: (Score:3)
In which way "cheating" means "best possible education"?
Re: (Score:2)
In which way "cheating" means "best possible education"?
Cheating in high school can help him get into a better college.
Re: (Score:3)
Which wont do him any good if he's just going to cheat there too.
Cheating in college can help him get into a good law school.
Then he can go into politics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: How stupid? (Score:1)
Well they're setting him up for an excellent career on Wall Street
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I use that all the time, because my grammar isn't great.
If that concerns you,
1. Get a good book on English grammar, study it, and apply it.
2. Read the classics of English literature, from Dr Johnson and Gibbon to Kingsley Amis and Gore Vidal. You will gradually soak up the habits of good, clear writing.
Kudos to school for standing up! (Score:5, Insightful)
All the administrators I've worked with cave in at the slightest threat of legal action. That this school had the integrity to fight the lawsuit indicates its students should be proud to study there.
Re: (Score:2)
What's the alternative? If they give cheats the highest grade or even, a passing grade, there's no incentive for any student to be honest. They may as well, close the school.
Re: (Score:3)
Please come up with A SINGLE EXAMPLE of a High School level HOMEWORK problem that could not be done by an LLM.
I will proceed to show you how to use an LLM to help solve it.
Re: (Score:2)
Easy, ask how many Rs there are in "Strawberry"
Re: (Score:2)
write me a python script which counts the occurrence of an input character in an input word and outputs the number of times the input character occurs.
That should get you started.
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure if this is whoosh or not but that is exactly what Deepseek LLM (or at least what is being used in Kaggle and math related functionality) does. It writes and executes a Python program. Then it vacillates back and forth because it "feels" like it should only have 2 r's based on non-Python LLM foolishness like phonetics and broken syllable splitting, but then decides yeah it really has 3. :u
Re: (Score:2)
Zero.
Or is that ZeRo?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm 99% certain that question never came up in my high school syllabus, it certainly would have stuck out between the questions on rudimentary calculus and the "calculate the supply/demand equilibrium" type questions I had in high school economics.
If the kid thinks about girls all day, its probably not gonna be in the exam. If instead he thinks about Cooklie Monster and Blues Clues, it probably will be.
This was a high school kid. In trouble for using a gramma
Re: (Score:3)
Here:
What are letters in the word strawberry? Omit letters that are not R. How many letters remain?
ChatGPT: To solve this:
The word strawberry is spelled: s-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-y.
Removing all letters except R, you're left with: r-r-r.
There are 3 "R" letters in the word strawberry.
Re: LLMs are here to stay, use them (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You use Wolfram Alpha for that! Duh.
Re: (Score:2)
Its bad enough (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
When a student cheats you arnt learning a skill go progress to the next step and whether you get caught or not, it only ends up hurting them. When the parents are reinforcing the behavior, its never likely they will ever correct that and do anything but look for a shortcut which will ultimately hurt them and everyone working around them.
In other words, he's a prime candidate for a high-powered Wall Street job!
Actually it is not cheating (Score:2)
it is plagiarizing a copypasta from an AI and not citing a source.
Re: (Score:2)
it is plagiarizing a copypasta from an AI and not citing a source.
You technically can't plagiarize a LLM's output because it isn't copyrightable in the first place. So, it really does fall under the category of cheating rather than failing to give credit to the original author.
Of course, this situation will probably only last until some company like Disney creates something of actual value using AI, then all bets are off.
Re: (Score:2)
You technically can't plagiarize a LLM's output because it isn't copyrightable in the first place.
Plagiarism is not copyright infringement; it's an academic moral offense not a legal one.
Plagiarism covers "passing off ideas as your own" which are not even copyrightable in the first place. You cannot copyright an idea.
It is plagiarism if you copy a work or ideas from a work without citing: Schools have even considered it plagiarism if it's our own work that you copied!
Using the same essay you created for
Re:Rules? I don't need no stinking Rule. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only one harmed by the student using AI was the student.
If the student is admitted to a prestigious college based on unearned grades, a more deserving student is denied that slot.
The "public" has no interest at all at stake here.
We fund public schools with tax dollars precisely because there is a public interest and benefit in an educated workforce.
Can you imagine a judge saying that about a decision involving the competing interests of two companies?
Judges do say that. Anti-trust law is a good example. A competitor can't just claim they were harmed. They must show that the public was harmed.
"The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself." -- United States Supreme Court
Honour system (Score:2)
Schools & other educational institutions need find another way to ensure that their students are assess