Dartmouth Provost okie-dokie
On Aug. 26, a Semafor investigation using Pangram to determine whether recent guest columns in major newspapers were written using artificial intelligence identified a column by Schnell as “100% AI-written.” Schnell’s column in The Washington Post — titled “Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem.” — argued that “a degree should distinguish what students can do […] The…
On August 26, an investigation by Semafor, utilizing Pangram to assess whether recent guest columns in prominent newspapers were generated by artificial intelligence, concluded that a column penned by Dartmouth Provost James Schnell was entirely AI-written. Entitled "Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem," the column in The Washington Post argued for universities to distinguish between work done independently by students and work accomplished with the aid of AI.
In response, Dartmouth conducted a review of Schnell's publications before and after the November 2022 release of ChatGPT. Pangram 4.0, the most recent publicly available AI detector, classified all of Schnell's works prior to 2022 as "100% human-written." However, a test of nine of Schnell's articles published in 2022 yielded a median percentage of "AI-written" content at 96%.
Notably, between 2019 and 2026, Schnell did not publish any academic works or op-eds authored solely by him, according to his online curriculum vitae. Pangram 4.0 operates by dividing the submitted text into smaller segments, which are then categorized as "human," "AI-assisted," or "AI-generated." Moreover, Schnell's September 18 email statement to Dartmouth, which he himself described as "100% AI-written" upon testing via Pangram, further illustrates the extent of AI's role in his communications.
Written by urgent.news from Marginal Revolution's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
