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Education The Courts AI

School Did Nothing Wrong When It Punished Student For Using AI, Court Rules 118

Posted by BeauHD from the sorry-kid dept.
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."

School Did Nothing Wrong When It Punished Student For Using AI, Court Rules More | Reply

School Did Nothing Wrong When It Punished Student For Using AI, Court Rules

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  • How stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @10:43PM (#64964001)

    "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:How stupid? (Score:4, Informative)

      by evil_aaronm ( 671521 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @02:05AM (#64964149)
      Re-wording the LLM would take time and effort, and I'm guessing Junior, here, waited until the last second to turn in the report - rather like a lot of us did as kids - and time wasn't a luxury he possessed. But, yeah, the parents kinda suck, here. My kid would've taken the F for a stunt like that.

      • Re-wording the LLM would take time and effort

        Think bigger! He could have used another LLM to reword it for him!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Isn't Grammarly just a better spellcheck?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        It does have some "advanced" capabilities, like rewording and offering feedback, but yeah. It's not ChatGPT.

        • It does have some "advanced" capabilities, like rewording and offering feedback, but yeah. It's not ChatGPT.

          I get the point that you and some previous posters have made that Grammarly isn't a ChatGPT clone. Thanks for the correction - what the student did wasn't as egregious as I thought, and my criticism was too harsh.

          That said, Grammarly's own site says "Get personalized suggestions based on what you’re writing and who will read it" and "Be perfectly professional, clear, and convincing in a few clicks, not a few hours". So yeah, I still say that the student cheated, and that he should have known better.

          Wh

          • So the question is, if a high school student hired a professional writer to 'punch up' his term paper, would that be cheating?

            Since students are graded not just on content or their argument, but also grammar, I think that would be considered cheating.

            If a student asks another student to help them write their paper, I think that might be considered cheating.

            School papers are supposed to be individual efforts demonstrating the students ability and writing skills, not their ability to involve ghost writers or

      • Isn't Grammarly just a better spellcheck?

        Originally, yes. But now it also does AI content generation. Students can use it to write paragraphs, essays, whatever.

    • Paper (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @07:12AM (#64964487)

      My son is the editor of his school paper, and he rejected a submission by a writer that was clearly AI generated. Beyond the janky prose, the smoking gun was the use of an em dash, only available on school computers by hitting ALT-0151. The newspaper class is pass/fail, and you only have one assignment per semester, so that student failed the class.

      The maddening thing, he said, was that it was a puffball piece the student could have wrote in one class period. It's one of the easiest classes, if you can write three articles in a year you get an A.

      • If you are using Word, it is a lot easier than that to enter an em dash. Sometimes, it will autocorrect a regular dash to an em dash, or you can do Ctrl+Alt+[Numeric keypad -] to get it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        the smoking gun was the use of an em dash, only available on school computers by hitting ALT-0151.

        Microsoft Word replaces inline "--" with em dash. So does Google Docs, as does Pages (at least on ios). Janky prose aside, if your son actually called that out as the smoking gun he has no business being an editor.

        • the smoking gun was the use of an em dash, only available on school computers by hitting ALT-0151.

          Microsoft Word replaces inline "--" with em dash. So does Google Docs, as does Pages (at least on ios). Janky prose aside, if your son actually called that out as the smoking gun he has no business being an editor.

          Add Libre Office to that list as well.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by JBMcB ( 73720 )

          Microsoft Word replaces inline "--" with em dash. So does Google Docs, as does Pages (at least on ios).

          They use InDesign.

        • My version of Word replaces -- with an En, not an Em.

    • ...and definitely don't get the kid a BMW for his birthday. It would only seal his fate.

    • I though Grammarly fixed up your existing sentences, which would be ok, except maybe in the grammar units of a class.
        But of course it includes LLM AI to generate answers to questions. Nowadays so, too, do most dog bowls.

    • Re: How stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kenh ( 9056 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @10:07AM (#64964787) Homepage Journal

      These parents have achieved Peak Helicopter Parent status...

      I can't imagine they thought filing a court challenge to their kids grade on a paper he plagiarized was a) going to result in a better grade for their son, and b) that the (presumably) prestigious colleges their son would apply to wouldn't see this in the press.

      Then again, maybe he's going to apply to Harvard [thecrimson.com], if that's the case his plagiarism won't hurt his application!

      • Helicoptering parents for some time have been showing up at universities and the workplace to continue shepharding their angels So what is peak helicopter parenting has possibly not yet achieved its zenith.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      The kid should claim "free speech" rights.

    • Shame the judge can't retroactively borrow some of the language from your comment in the decision. Your choice of words is better.

    • What where the parents thinking? Clearly they should have used an AI-lawyer to prepare the suit. Doh!

  • Kudos to school for standing up! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pierceelevated ( 5484374 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @10:54PM (#64964011)

    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.

    • ... cave-in at the slightest threat ...

      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.

      • What's the alternative?

        I think quite often it's the worst thing possible. To ignore it but then to find ways to manipulate down the suspected cheats marks. I was very early using printed out papers on a computer. One year I got a pretty bad mark for a school paper that I thought was okay. The next year, I had an actual external examiner for a science paper (not normal in the UK). After talking to me he gave me a great mark. I heard from my teacher, though, that he'd looked and to begin with thought I'd copied it from a journal an

  • 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. Its too bad the school doesnt have the gonads to step up and stop this before it becomes common place, but that is "education" today.

    • 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!

  • it is plagiarizing a copypasta from an AI and not citing a source.

    • 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)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        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

      • Plagiarism has nothing to do with copyright. At all. Violation of copyright is never called "plagiarism", and copying public domain works can be called "plagiarism."

    • Did the student follow the rules of the assignment and school? No. The kid cheated.

      The parent's need to own up to the fact they failed as a parent and then reinforced that parenting failure for everyone to see by suing the school. Such a family is obviously a mess with no morals.

  • Well this is interesting (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now that Microsoft 365 ships with Copilot by default enabled without any option to disable it, this includes Family, Personal, and Student editions I am not sure schools can easily mandate that a student must not use AI at any level of education.

    Especially when many educational facilities require Microsoft compatible formats which OpenOffice and LibreOffice do not quite achieve.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )

      The issue isn't so much that AI itself can't be useful, but students should take the examples that AI provides, then at the very least, re-write it so the language is at least that of the student. Using AI to give sources for a paper, then looking into those sources to do your own work would be fair and wouldn't be cheating. The purpose of education is for students to LEARN the subjects.

    • There was a time when using Google for research was "cheating". You were supposed to look stuff up in the library. And colleges were graded based on the size and quality of that library.

      I think the reality is that AI is going to be the goto way of producing material and figuring out how to ensure its producing appropriate results is going to be an important skill. At least for a while. Eventually changing an AI output to something that better fits your desired result will become "cheating".

      • No idea what time that was. Not one I have lived through. Not providing sources has always been disallowed, but how those sources were found has never been controlled by any kind of regulation.

  • Homework assignments essentially operate on an honour system, i.e. the student declares that the work they are submitting is all their own. Running an honour system in a high-stakes environment with kids who haven't yet learnt the importance of behaving responsibly, you know, the kind where parents are likely to sue the school if their kid gets bad grades, doesn't sound like the best of ideas to me.

    Schools & other educational institutions need find another way to ensure that their students are assess

  • I have to think the parents probably cheated their way to whatever success they have, and their dimwit son's behaviour is simply proof the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

    • This kid is going to go through life with the idea that he has been 'wronged',
      and that he is the victim of an injustice. How that manifests itself will be in
      some form of lying, cheating, and stealing.

      Like politics, if he can cover this up somehow. Thanks, mom & dad!

  • So if you use AI to complete schoolwork you fail, and if you avoid it you can succeed

    Either way you go and get a job where it is an advantage if you can use AI text tools that are used every day ....

  • As in, money sucked out of the kids family. There is a time and a place for such as a taser or pepper spray, and this case highlights this need.

  • If the kid had used Grammarly as aid and then used his own words, there would be no problem. Or if he had included the Grammarly text in quotes with an attribution, there would be no problem (well, maybe he'd get dinged for using a bad or unallowed citation).

    If the teacher had detected copied text that came from his friend instead of Grammarly, the penalty should be the same. So, is the problem an issue with AI or more an issue of non-attribution?

  • Was the subject that this kid used AI on relevant to the workplace and establishing a career? Otherwise, I don't see how memorizing facts about some long dead so and so dead from hundreds of years ago is going to put food on the table for most people.
  • All that matters is if the student was an artist, in any form, and then if the output from the tool was artistic expression as requested by the student. Quoting the Ars Technica article:

    point out that RNH was repeatedly taught the fundamentals of academic integrity, including how to use and cite AI.

    if that's true, then what integrity did he violate? He copied some junk citations, okay, but what if he demanded his teachers cite all sources they use to make any point, could they, would they, would they know how?

    They couldn't search them because all search engines are AI engines, they couldn't ask AI tools like ChatG

  • ProTip:
    We're in the midst of humanity being augmented by AI / phones etc.

    This is already colliding with the idea that the ability to memorise / analyse / regurgitate is the key to assessing the extent to which someone should benefit from the riches offered by society (*).

    This calls into question the method of evaluation and indeed the party 'called upon' to perform the evaluation' - educational system, you need to adapt your methods or be replaced!

    (*) e.g. the ability to ring-fence the benefits accruing fro

  • Imagine being so petty that you sue a school over a grade, especially when they know their kid broke the rules. I'm not surprised it is Hingham, plenty of entitled well off folks there.

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