A Massachusetts couple claims that their son’s high school attempted to derail his future by giving him detention and a bad grade on an assignment he wrote using generative AI.

An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.

In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.

Yeah, I’m 100% with the school on this one.

  • ilost7489@lemmy.ca
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    13 days ago

    Perhaps it is also that LLMs are horrible at making any kind of argument and probably wrote a shit paper, never mind the plagiarism? Frankly a 65 is a high mark for doing something like this

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgOP
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      13 days ago

      Someone else in the comments said that it’s possible (may vary by state / locale) that 65 may be the lowest grade they’re allowed to give now. So if that’s the case, I suspect the teacher would have given them a 0 if they could.