ChatGPT-Wary Universities Scramble to Prepare for New School Year
Nine months after the chatbot sent schools into a panic, colleges are slowly learning to live with AI.
At Harvard, students rely on a duck-themed bot to help with computer science problems, but professor-approved tools have been slower to spread to other departments.
Photographer: Adam Glanzman/BloombergChatGPT set the academic world ablaze after it was introduced in November, when the AI chatbot suddenly gave students a hard-to-detect shortcut for completing essays and assignments. Nine months later, as a new school year nears, many universities are still crafting their response.
Colleges around the world spent much of the previous academic year adopting ad hoc approaches to the software — or no policy at all. Some professors banned the use of it outright, citing plagiarism, while others looked to incorporate it more intentionally into their curriculum. That led to inconsistent approaches across classes and departments.