Technology changes the cheating game

BY ZACHARY NEWMAN Reporter

In December, one of the chemistry teachers caught students sending pictures of the on-paper Unit 5 chemistry test to their peers. e student claimed the pictures were of a practice test, but er further investigation, the chemistry teachers found clear evidence to the contrary.

“I see it as laziness, absolute laziness,” chemistry teacher Alexandra Kirkpatrick said. “If you come to Flex and get help, and work hard in class, most kids can be successful. I was disappointed, angryand sad, but I started thinking of the [students] and how this would ultimately impact them.”

Test scores were removed from the grade book to ensure nobody received an unfair advantage.

“I studied and was ready for the test and all of a sudden it was taken away just because of something [people] did,” sophomore and chemistry student Edy Knight said.

To ensure students were still tested on the unit, Unit 5 questions were worth three times the points on the nal exam.

“I don’t think they should have done that,” Knight said. “ ey could have made us redo the unit test, but [tripling] points caused a lot of stress that we didn’t need on top of everything.” e chemistry scandal was not an isolated incident. In a modern age dominated by technology, cheating on tests has become considerably easier.

A similar situation occurred in Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) teacher Elizabeth Bellas’s class. Bellas caught multiple students plagiarizing from the internet and sharing their inclass essays. She spent nals week contacting parents, talking to the principals and having students make up the work.

“I was so mad that my time was wasted,” Bellas said. “I was very frustrated and angry. It’s disrespectful. I trust [my students] until [they] break the [trust]. It sucks that I have to think about [cheating] all the time.”

ChatGPT can do homework. Now what?

BY JAKE ROTHSTEIN Head Photographer

“As the use of arti cial intelligence in education becomes more prevalent, concerns are being raised about the ethical implications of using language models like ChatGPT in high schools. While the technology can be used to assist students in learning, it also raises questions about privacy and the potential for misuse, such as with automated essay writing, which can undermine the integrity of academic work.”

At least that’s what ChatGPT wrote when I asked it to produce a lede for an article about the controversial use of the chatbot in high schools.

OpenAI, an arti cial intelligence research company, released ChatGPT — a free AI chatbot — in late November. ChatGPT immediately gained massive popularity, attracting 1 million users just ve days a er launch.

Unlike search engines such as Google, which return links to websites that contain information, ChatGPT aims to directly answer users’ prompts, whether they involve solving mathemat- ical equations, writing essays or explaining complex topics in simpler terms. For high school students, those on-demand speci c answers can be a valuable resource.

“I have used it to check answers every once in a while for some di erent classes,” junior Nate Teitelbaum said. “I don’t exactly know how it gets all of its info, so I don’t know if everything it tells me is reliable, but for some [subjects] like math, it can be a very good tool.”

See “ChatGPT,” page 2

According to a survey by the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics, 51% of 23,000 high school students admitted they cheated on a test in the past year.

“People think cheating is the best way to get [good] grades and accomplish their goals [without] learning anything,” Knight said.

Advances in arti cial intelligence — such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot — have created new ways for students to cheat on their assessments, and even circumvent plagiarism checkers like turnitin.com.

“Arti cial intelligence opens doors for people to plagiarize,” Bellas said. “ ere are a lot of students that are doing the work honestly, and it’s not right for people to take credit for something [they] didn’t [produce].” e COVID-19 pandemic has also threatened test integrity. Online learning enabled students to cheat from behind a Zoom screen and avoid consequences. And even a er students have returned to in-person learning, pandemic tendencies have continued to plague classrooms.

See “Rise in cheating,” page 3