TechThe campus divide over AI detectors and proof of cheating
The Atlantic reports that an MIT working group advised against relying on AI detectors. Turnitin tells the magazine its results should start a conversation, not serve as hard evidence of wrongdoing.
TLDR
A UW–Madison biology professor told The Atlantic he planned to scrap writing assignments: students had learned to remove his hidden chatbot-catching prompts, and university guidance discouraged relying on detectors alone. The magazine cites a University of Chicago working paper that found Pangram essentially never mistook long human-written passages for AI, though it occasionally errs on shorter snippets. It also describes a Notre Dame study that found “humanizer” tools could fool an older version; Pangram says its latest model is more robust against them. Separately, The Dartmouth reports that nine of Provost Santiago Schnell’s works published in 2026 received a median “AI-written” text percentage of 96% from Pangram. Schnell told the paper he uses AI for language refinement and editing, but reviews the final text and takes responsibility for its content. He said a detector’s classification is not a determination of authorship.
The campus divide over AI detectors and proof of cheating
The Atlantic reports that an MIT working group advised against relying on AI detectors. Turnitin tells the magazine its results should start a conversation, not serve as hard evidence of wrongdoing.
TLDR
A UW–Madison biology professor told The Atlantic he planned to scrap writing assignments: students had learned to remove his hidden chatbot-catching prompts, and university guidance discouraged relying on detectors alone. The magazine cites a University of Chicago working paper that found Pangram essentially never mistook long human-written passages for AI, though it occasionally errs on shorter snippets. It also describes a Notre Dame study that found “humanizer” tools could fool an older version; Pangram says its latest model is more robust against them. Separately, The Dartmouth reports that nine of Provost Santiago Schnell’s works published in 2026 received a median “AI-written” text percentage of 96% from Pangram. Schnell told the paper he uses AI for language refinement and editing, but reviews the final text and takes responsibility for its content. He said a detector’s classification is not a determination of authorship.
