'I get paid the same whether I pass you or fail you': Professor vows to flunk students using ChatGPT

The spread of generative AI on college campuses is prompting sharper consequences from faculty, including one theatre professor who says using ChatGPT on coursework can carry consequences well beyond a poor mark.

According to Futurism, Grambling State University professor Neal Hebert has told students that AI-written work could earn a failing grade on the assignment and, in some cases, jeopardize their standing in the class altogether.

What's happening?

In The New Yorker's roundup of faculty testimonials, Hebert said the rise of AI-enabled cheating has forced him into a much tougher posture in the classroom.

"I tell students that ChatGPT is disallowed from their writing process, that I can immediately tell when ChatGPT has been used, and that I will fail the student on this assignment if it is used — and, potentially, for the entire course, if we go through a formal appeals process," he wrote.

With theatre majors, he said, he makes the point even more directly.

"I get paid the same whether I pass you or fail you," he said. He added, "'But what you've just done is told me and everyone else in our department that you are so lazy you would rather outsource your collaboration to an app than risk being an artist.'"

Not every professor is responding the same way. 

Daniel Silver, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, told the magazine that "AI has fundamentally changed how I teach, and it demands basic reflection about what we are trying to accomplish."

Why does it matter?

Professors say overreliance on AI can short-circuit the very reading, thinking, and problem-solving skills students are paying to develop. 

That could make the already-high cost of tuition feel even more wasted if graduates leave school less prepared for jobs and real-world collaboration.

Hebert pointed to an assignment he issued on August Wilson's Fences as an example of the problem. He said many of his students' papers began to read almost interchangeably, written in what he called "that inimitable ChatGPT style" — "elevator muzak, but in words." 

In theatre, where creativity, interpretation, and close reading are central to the work, that kind of sameness may be especially concerning.

Silver said the shift has also taken a personal toll on instructors. He said AI caused him a great deal of "emotional upheaval," even as he has tried to adapt.

What's being done?

Some professors are redesigning assignments rather than simply banning AI outright.

Silver said he spent much of the academic year creating new coursework that uses AI in more deliberate ways, including assignments in which students experiment with AI agents modeled after major thinkers.

When students use the technology "in a thoughtless way, as a replacement for their thought and judgment," Silver said he meets with them directly, gives them a zero on the assignment, and lets them try again.

"They usually improved, but not always," he said.

To make chatbot shortcuts less useful, Hebert has started assigning plays obscure enough that AI systems struggle to handle them.

"If ChatGPT is used on these assignments now, it hallucinates characters, plotlines — it just makes s*** up, since it has nothing to go on," he said.

"I've stopped being a collaborator in these intro courses and started being a plagiarism cop, and I do resent that a bit," Hebert wrote.

Silver said, "I do feel we all, including the students, are learning how to live with it, and we'll come out better on the other side."

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