How Trinity College is dealing with AI and cheating
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What is the overall focus of the episode on AI and academic integrity?
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You've given me an an a an assignment uh to do, uh or or somebody has, and I'm now allowing AI to to generate a
draft. This is one model that some colleagues are using, that you try to answer the question using the AI, perhaps collaboratively as a as a class, and then the value in the in the the teaching value of the assessment is to go through that document and identify what you would do to make it better, where the pitfalls are, where the risks are in terms of hallucinated sources and and things like that.
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Hello and you're welcome to the Big Tech Show with me, Adrian Weckler. Now, AI and education, second level and particularly third level, it's always been a thorny subject, but now it's reaching a level where we may have to start asking basic questions like how qualified students might be when they arrive at third level, and maybe even the actual value of a degree. Dr. Alan Eustace is Is an assistant professor at the School of Law and Trinity College Dublin, and you're here in a personal capacity today. Um, Alan, we're told that AI is here to stay, because it is here to stay. But tell me some of the problems. that it might have for the education of students uh or from a teacher's point of view, a third level.
Listen, most of our students are highly motivated to be in the courses that they've chosen to do. A very, very small minority of students will fall into bad habits around the use of AI and other technologies. This is this is a story we've had to deal with for a long time now. Uh but certainly with AI tools becoming uh more powerful and more widespread, we are seeing some difficulties in uh delivering the same quality education that we've always tried to do in the third level sector. So for example, most um arts, humanity and social sciences degrees, or I'm a law uh lecturer, that's that's our field, um, you know, they'll be assessed by a combination of exams and essays. The essay is, as far as we've always been concerned,
a gold standard tool for measuring deep comprehension of the relevant material that we're trying to teach. When you have AI tools that can mimic or simulate a a a pretty convincing essay in in a lot of cases, depending on the subject matter, depending on um how well the student maybe uses the tool, and we'll come back to that, I hope, later on. Um It can be very difficult for us to validate that the student has actually learned what we're hoping they will learn and what we're trying to teach them. Again, I I say that's a a minority of students. Um the evidence we don't have good stats in Ireland, but the evidence from the UK is that while over 90% of third-level students are using AI in some way, only about 10 to 12 percent are using it in
a an obviously inappropriate way to uh substitute for their own work in in producing
In other words, basically getting a ChatGPT or a Claude or a Gemini or whatever to write tracts of an essay that you're submitting.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall focus of the episode on AI and academic integrity?
0:00–5:38
2
How are students currently using AI tools to complete coursework?
5:38–10:32
3
What challenges do universities face in verifying genuine learning when AI can write essays?
10:32–15:39
4
How does Trinity College detect and investigate potential AI‑generated work?
15:39–19:58
5
What research‑trail and document‑version practices are being introduced to prove authorship?
19:58–25:19
6
How are oral assessments and integrity vivas being used as alternatives to written essays?
25:19–30:23
7
What advice does the guest give students about responsibly using AI in their studies?
30:23–31:38
8
How might AI reshape the future value of university degrees and critical thinking?
31:38–31:55