Dartmouth provost exposed for using AI in op-ed about AI cheating, students want him fired

A top university administrator is facing backlash after admitting he used AI to help write published articles.

Dartmouth College provost Santiago Schnell has drawn particular criticism because one of those pieces was an opinion column about students using AI to cheat.

Some students say the contradiction undermines his credibility in a role meant to uphold academic standards.

Here's what to know

As Futurism reported, the scrutiny intensified after a Semafor investigation reviewed op-eds in leading U.S. newspapers and found that a Washington Post column by Schnell scored 100% AI-written when run through the AI detector Pangram.

The controversy deepened when The Dartmouth, the campus's student newspaper, ran pieces through the same detector, comparing work from before ChatGPT's November 2022 launch with work published afterward.

The newspaper found that all of his earlier work scored 100% human-written. Nine pieces published afterward had a median score of 96% AI-written.

Responding to the investigation, Schnell said his use of chatbots was limited and insisted that he was still the true author of the work, Futurism reported.

"I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts, and decide what appears in the final text," Schnell wrote. "I regard these technologies as assistive tools," he continued, adding that they were no "substitute for my research, intellectual judgment, or authorship."

The student paper also ran Schnell's statement through the detector, and it scored 100% AI-written.

In a follow-up explanation, he said he first drafted the text himself and then "used an AI tool to assist with language and clarity." He added, "I am fully responsible for any text under my signature."

More background

Eli Moyse, who majors in government and creative writing and serves as the opinion editor at The Dartmouth, published a piece titled "Fire Provost Santiago Schnell."

Moyse argued that hiding AI use in published work, especially in an article about AI cheating, was an "insult."

Moyse compared the situation to how students would be treated.

"If students at Dartmouth used AI to write an entire paper without acknowledgement and then submitted it to their professor, they would be in clear violation of the Academic Honor Principle," he wrote, per Futurism.

Moyse summed up the backlash in his piece, writing: "I would argue that Provost Schnell's job is one of the most respected in all of academia. So, if he has been using AI as extensively as is suspected, his decision to do so to write an article published in a newspaper of record is an incredible, almost unbelievable insult to our community and to the readership of the Washington Post."

Where can I learn more?

If you want more on how AI is complicating cheating and trust in higher education, these stories dig into the same debate.

• At NYU, a professor turned to personalized oral exams to blunt AI-assisted cheating.

• One student got roasted online after using AI to cheat and then sharing the grade.

• In a virtual classroom, a student pointed out an AI-generated assignment detail.

• In academic publishing, critics blasted a fake AI prompt left inside journal research text.

• World Labs founder Fei-Fei Li argued college degrees matter less as AI reshapes hiring.

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