By James Howard
Honor in the Era of AI: Recommitting to Our Values
On November 30th, 2022, the San Francisco-based technology startup OpenAI launched ChatGPT. The premise of the program is simple: you ask the program a question or to do a task, and it can, within seconds, produce a substantive and clearly-written response. It is a resource that can spark great creativity and streamline otherwise tedious writing, such as an email, but can also be used to avoid putting in the work to produce academic writing. Unfortunately, the Gilman Honor Council has recently dealt with an uptick of violations as students use ChatGPT to write their English and History papers.
Claire Lincoln, the chair of the Honor Council, commented on this recent increase in cases, comparing it to the advent of Google Translate. She wrote, “students in modern language classes had a new tool that made taking shortcuts feel really easy,” similar to how students now react to ChatGPT. She noted that it takes time for people to realize that just because a tool is available does not mean it is appropriate to use, and is optimistic that as ChatGPT becomes a more familiar entity, students will be less prone to abuse it. Ms. Lincoln also mentioned the nuances of judging a student’s use of ChatGPT. In her opinion, it comes down to one question: did they have an original idea that they augmented with ChatGPT, or did they simply put their essay prompt into the program and copy and paste the result?
ChatGPT still has notable flaws; it is overly formal at times, it leans heavily on information as opposed to analysis, and it even cites non-existent quotes from books. For these reasons, Gilman's English teachers can usually tell the difference between ChatGPT and human-produced work. And, as English Department Chair Patrick Hastings noted in an email to The News, “GPT4 has passed the bar exam. This stuff is only getting more powerful.” Mr. Hastings suggested that these advances “might eventually require a reconsideration of the skills we prioritize.” While it is impossible to know what skills AI will render insignificant in the coming years, we do know that a strong sense of honor – and the self-responsibility that lies at its core – will remain integral to success, professional or otherwise.
Ultimately, we as a school need to ponder how to hold each other accountable; the punitive measures the Honor Council implements would pale in comparison to implementing a culture of honor. Washington and Lee University, a school of choice for many Gilman graduates, provides such a culture. During their exam season, for instance, students are permitted to take exams anywhere on campus so long as they return within the allotted time. Students enjoy freedom because they are willing to hold each other accountable. Herein lies the power of a community of honor, far more powerful than a committee or rules issued by an institution.
What about Gilman? Gilman administrators and teachers extol the virtues of honor, and rightly so. They require students to copy and sign honor pledges on every assignment. It is students who trivialize these rituals by treating them as empty phrases.
In order to cultivate a community of honor, we need to understand what is holding us back. We must not focus on limiting the opportunities for a student to commit an honor violation, whether that be through banning take-home assessments or running every English paper through an AI detector. It ought not be a teacher’s duty to monitor their students and make sure they are not cheating; they are here to teach, not be referees. Instead, the responsibility ought to lie with the students to hold themselves accountable.
The reality is that cheating hurts everyone involved; as Mr. Hastings put it, being academically dishonest “will only corrupt the bonds that have always distinguished our school community as a special place to teach and learn.”
We must instill in students the utility of honor, not just as an amorphous aspect of being the “Gilman Man” that Mr. Smyth talks about in assemblies but as an important part of our preparation for both college and the workforce. There will invariably be tasks that one cannot simply delegate to a computer at any job. As technology advances, it will be our ingenuity and character that we develop at Gilman by not cheating that will make us stand out the most. My next article will examine the reasons Gilman students cheat and solutions to build a more honorable community.
