A student has used the AI chatbot ChatGPT to write a university essay, and his lecturer said it would have passed. Pieter Snepvangers graduated from the University of Bristol last year but decided to test the AI software to see if it could be used to complete coursework.
Students in America have been banned from using the software, while UK universities are “scrambling” to review how they can detect its use. Pieter says he was shocked to find a university lecturer admitting students could “cheat their way” to a passing grade. The graduate decided to take a different approach and asked the software 10 separate questions all relating to the essay, and eventually received 3,500 words from the software. He then took the best paragraphs and rearranged them in an order that “resembled the structure of an essay”.
His feedback continued: “Basically this essay isn’t referenced. It is very general. It doesn’t go into detail about anything. It’s not very theoretical or conceptually advanced. The lecturer said the piece contained “good proper language” and that he could have been convinced it was written by a “lazy” student who hadn’t put too much work in and was “waffling”. The only element that ChatGPT failed on was a lack of in-text referencing, but the lecturer admitted if Pieter had simply added references from the module’s reading list, he “might have hit high 50s”.