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British AI study ‘wake-up call’ for universities

A lawyer at Pinsent Masons in Britain has highlighted the need for universities to implement “robust policies” on AI use, and to carefully consider modes of assessment.

Partner Julian Sladdin was commenting after the publication of study conducted at the University of Reading.

The research found that the generative AI tool ChatGPT was not only able to generate exam answers for psychology modules that could largely avoid being recognised as having been AI-generated, but that those answers could typically outscore real student answers upon assessment.

In a statement, the University of Reading said the ChatGPT-generated answers “went undetected in 94% of cases”, and that those answers “on average, attained higher grades than real student submissions”.

A note from Pinsent Masons said that the latest study was published after recent UNESCO research found that fewer than 10% of 450 academic institutions surveyed globally had developed policies for, or guidance on, the use of generative AI tools.

Advances in AI

Sladdin said that universities needed to act to ensure that AI could be harnessed by students in their studies, but not misused to gain unfair academic advantages.

“The academics who led this study have described its findings as a ‘wake-up call’ for academic institutions – not only in the UK, but also worldwide. I agree,” he said.

“It shows that significant recent advances in generative AI have made its use much harder to identify by the fact that previous weaknesses with the technology, such as hallucination effects – the creation of plausible responses which are false or not faithful to the original data – have been reduced.

“In addition, the research may also suggest that while many institutions have changed their assessment processes already to meet this challenge, more work is needed considering the continuing developments in generative AI and its use by students.” Sladdin stated.