A senior Dartmouth College administrator resigned after a university committee found he used artificial intelligence to shape his writing, including in a guest column in the Washington Post on AI cheating.
Wednesday’s announcement of Provost Santiago Schnell’s departure from the Ivy League university comes as colleges across the country grapple with how transform teaching as more missions can be completed with AI tools.
Dartmouth bills itself as the birthplace of AI, saying the field got its start at the Hanover, New Hampshire, school in 1956, when a small group of scientists gathered for a summer research project on the subject. A conference commemorating the 70th anniversary — entitled “What should remain human?” – started on Thursday.
University President Sian Leah Beilock said in a written statement that keeping Dartmouth at the forefront of AI means “leading in a fluid and rapidly changing environment.”
“This is why, as leaders, it is so critical that we demonstrate the transparency and human judgment that we expect of our students and scholars,” the president wrote, adding that Schnell’s departure was “his decision” and that the school wishes him well.
Schnell referred questions to his lawyers, who did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Problems arose after publishing the media Semafor published guest columns in major newspapers via an AI filter. Schnell’s August column in the Post, titled “Universities are fighting against AI cheating. But there is a deeper problem,” turned out to be entirely written by AI.
Schnell defended himself, saying that at the time he used ChatGPT to “refine some arguments” but that the column was based on his “own thinking.”
The college newspaper, The Dartmouththen broadcast other Schnell posts via an AI detector. Writings prior to ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 were found to be written by humans, but high rates of AI use have been detected in its recent writings.
Schnell told the newspaper in an email last month that he uses AI to “refine language, revise, improve clarity and organization, and make writing processes more efficient.” The newspaper analyzed the statement through an AI detector and found that it was written by AI.
In a follow-up statement, Schnell told the newspaper that he “developed the background and wrote a draft” of the email, then “used an AI tool to help with language and clarity.”
An investigation ensued and the faculty committee find that Schnell used AI to “significantly alter his writing” and “has not been upfront about his use of AI.”
Schnell, a Venezuelan-born mathematical biologist, previously taught and held leadership positions at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan and Indiana University, according to his LinkedIn profile.
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