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.

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.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    10·
    1 month ago

    I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of making a database of students who might never apply to my school, but now I’m wondering about the legality of background checks or even cursory Google searches as part of the admissions process, because it would surely show up there.

    • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
      7·
      1 month ago

      Modern campus have turned into police states. It is literally common practice to scan your emails for anything “interesting”. Sometimes used to spy on protesting students and that was in BLM times, if I remember correctly.

      Look into Social Sentinel, if you want to learn more

    • Kaboom@reddthat.com
      6·
      1 month ago

      I would imagine it’s regular practice. Make sure they went to the schools they say they did, make sure they’re not a rapist, that sort of thing.