Have you heard about academic integrity? Bad news, it’s under threat! Honestly, without jokes: the recent AI advancements threaten academic integrity in various settings. AI generators progress so rapidly that we can’t keep up with them. The same relates to AI checkers: they try but still can’t solve all the problems. The thing is, AI learns and crafts texts in a surprisingly human manner. Nevertheless, let’s discuss why turning to AI checkers is still critical if you respect your work and that of others.
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Why does academic integrity matter
It’s about the purpose of your studies. If a diploma is everything you want from college, well, you may be fine without such concepts. But if you want to be honest with yourself and others to become a valued specialist in your field, that’s another case. You can’t respect others’ work without proving your position with particular actions. For instance, academic integrity requires you to avoid plagiarism and cite your sources properly. It’s not hard once you learn how to follow the standards. However, recent AI advancements put us at risk of unintentional plagiarism. That’s when you need an AI essay checker to produce high-quality papers, contributing to solutions to current issues.
Assume you’ve just completed an essay. It’s self-reflection, you haven’t browsed the internet to complete any of your paragraphs. If anybody accuses you of plagiarism, they will be wrong. So why do you need an AI checker in such a case? To improve the quality of your writing! Such programs can accidentally mark your original work as AI, but usually, they do so if the tone seems too robotic. You don’t want to sound like a soulless machine, right? So let’s examine the reasoning behind AI checkers’ conclusions:
● Repetitive patterns. AI-generated content often follows the same sentence patterns or repeats the same words instead of providing synonyms. Such writing is less engaging and requires your readers to make an effort to understand the main idea.
● Overly formal tone. Robotic writing indeed lacks what humans call a soul. Academic writing must follow strict rules and sacrifice creativity. Nevertheless, even the most complicated research articles reflect the author’s personality.
● Word choices predictability. Although AI generators are trained on vast datasets, their word choice is quite predictable. You don’t want to repeat yourself, right? AI rarely cares about such nuances and produces the text according to repetitive algorithms it has learned.
● Surface-level presentation. AI-generated text often lacks insights and describes the issue without diving into details. While humans are willing to share their unique experiences and perspectives, the machine can’t fake the same enthusiasm. Of course, you would like to make your reflection personal and your report truly insightful.
The absence of such elements makes your writing more meaningful and engaging. Tracing plagiarism elements ultimately contributes to academic integrity, which allows us to step forward in our studies. Honesty, trust, and respect make progress possible since knowledge is built by many people. Everybody deserves recognition.
The absence of such elements makes your writing more meaningful and engaging. Tracing plagiarism elements ultimately contributes to academic integrity, which allows us to step forward in our studies. Honesty, trust, and respect make progress possible since knowledge is built by many people. Everybody deserves recognition.
How do AI checkers improve academic outcomes?
Such technologies encourage students to develop their writing and critical thinking skills instead of relying on generators. AI usage drops if everybody knows that such content should be and will be detected. This way, students are more engaged in various projects. Tracing the evolution of AI tools also helps students and educators adapt to changes and develop more innovative solutions. AI checkers encourage the ethical implementation of such technologies, ensuring that involved sides benefit from the consequences. Finally, AI checkers assist educators in evaluating student work and providing them with comprehensive feedback.
However, as already mentioned, AI checkers may mark an original text as AI if it lacks insights or personality. The article from the International Journal for Educational Integrity also highlights that available tools struggle while dealing with human writing. Checkers produce false positives and uncertain classifications, leading us to several conclusions. First, such technologies require much attention and further development. Otherwise, AI checkers won’t keep up with AI generators, allowing the machines to gradually replace humans. Second, both students and educators should think twice before blaming others for generated content. Acquisitions may be based on false positives.
What to do with AI tools?
The issues mentioned don’t mean that you should refrain from using AI. On the contrary, integrating such tools into your routine can bring your productivity to another level. While using AI to write your college essay contradicts the principles of academic integrity, nothing should stop you from using it for brainstorming. Who will benefit if you sit in front of a blank page for hours? Instead, try asking AI the right question. Its answers may guide your thoughts in the right direction and help you start. Still not confident enough? Then, ask AI to prepare an outline! It may lack critical points, but you can edit the structure according to your objectives. In any case, the first step is behind: your page is not blank anymore.
Similarly, AI generators and checkers assist educators by helping them save time and effort. But how can they avoid unreasonable accusations of AI plagiarism? The only option is to be attentive to detail. For instance, educators can compare a plagiarism-marked essay with other works submitted by this student. Suspicions arise if papers have different styles, complexity, flow, and citation incorporation. Even spelling matters: why would a student who always makes loads of typos submit a perfect essay all of a sudden? Another solution is combining AI checkers. Although they are commonly trained on the same language model, similar results increase suspicion further.
Wrapping up
As you can see, AI tools are already an integral part of our routine. They still can’t replace humans, so you can rest assured that it’s too early for a machine uprising. What else you can do is use the potential of AI to the fullest to improve your productivity and the quality of your writing. AI is a brilliant assistant as long as you don’t give up on critical thinking and academic integrity.
Image Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko
