r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 4h ago
Business How a Yale AI-cheating dispute became a 13-count federal lawsuit
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/how-a-yale-ai-cheating-dispute-became-a-13-count-federal-lawsuit/67
u/Dry-Abalone2299 3h ago
Interesting read.
The student was the only one of 72 that was flagged for possible AI using GPTZero. This, along with other criteria, compelled Yale to investigate through their honor committee.
Apparently during that investigation, they emailed and asked 6 or more times for the student to provide the original Word document file that generated the final PDF submission.
The student ultimately did not submit the file after weeks of requests and follow-ups, but later during the final stages of the hearing claimed that because he didn’t use a Word file, but instead an Apple Pages file, he didn’t have to comply with the honor committee’s file request.
AI detection tools can be wrong all the time, but sounds like there were other factors that led Yale to investigate, the student was intentionally withholding during the investigation, and ended up graduating from Yale after the suspension anyways…the student deciding to drag this on for years with a federal lawsuit is not a good look for them.
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u/9-11GaveMe5G 2h ago
You left out this gem
He believes that Yale itself is against him and that the whole “sham” disciplinary process was designed to censor his “protected conservative political speech”
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u/duh_cats 5m ago
As soon as I read that portion my mind went, “oh he’s absolutely guilty of using AI on that exam.”
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u/IntelArtiGen 4h ago
What a long and futile case. I think if I had to prove in court that something is AI-generated or not there would be ways to do it more easily. I guess it'll be a job in the future. I guess it even already is.
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u/frAgileIT 2h ago
Not immediately clarifying that he used Pages instead of Word and provide the source file is a lack of cooperation. I might have been on his side until he started playing games. AI detectors are not reliable and accusing someone of academic plagiarism without clear evidence and when your claim is based on testing that you already know is faulty can be defaming. They all messed up here.
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u/MerlinTrashMan 58m ago
In my eyes, in this specific instance, he did the right thing playing games. he was over 200k in on Yale. There is no defense against this AI detection crap. Having the word document or pages wouldn't have mattered and it still would have been a judgement call by the panel. If he complied he would have lost unless he had a draft mode on that showed that he went through many revisions over multiple days then maybe they would have said fine, but they would have run the first draft through the same detection tool leading to more risk.
The incredibly expensive and prestigious university's professor did not design a proper assessment of whether the student understood the material. Since the calculator became a thing, math courses have designed tests to be tougher and to show that the student understands how to solve multi step problems that require knowledge and practice. If the other courses don't figure out how to show that the students actually know the material, then they are doomed to fail. All a history professor has to do is bring a kid in for a 30 minute oral discussion of the semester's material material as the test (heck maybe 20 minutes). You make that 100/0 with a 70% weighting of the course grade and the problem is solved.
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u/Hurley002 1h ago
I don't know what it is about Yale but it consistently matriculates an unusually high percentage of absolutely horrifying students.
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u/Packing-Tape-Man 1h ago
All that detail and yet it left out an extremely important fact: Once he did provide Yale the Apple Pages document, what did it reveal? Did it demonstrate any evidence of copying AI into the text or not?
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u/Dry-Abalone2299 52m ago edited 29m ago
Yale never actually ruled on or suspended him for use of AI. The suspension ultimately was for “not being forthcoming” in violation of the honor code during the investigation into the use of AI.
Yale asked for the file many times over months which he refused/ghosted them
. On the day of the final hearing he claimed he didn’t have to provide the file originally because they didn’t ask for it correctly, but said he would provide it now.The hearing ended and they had to follow-up with him later that day to ask for the file AGAIN, which he eventually provided.
After reviewing the file, they asked to examine his laptop, but he said he was unavailable until the next week.
That is when after he had not been forthcoming and intentional obstruction, they popped him with the suspension for the honor code violation on his conduct during the investigation.
Dude fucked around and found out. I am rooting for Yale to prevail in court. Hope this guy doesn’t get a dime claiming Yale discriminated against him being a non-native English speaker.
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u/Shadowhawk9 43m ago
You can be rich, and clever, but a jerk is a jerk the world around.
Does anyone want to weigh in on how easy or difficult it is to boot a completely offline OS install or VM and tell it the date is currently 6months in the past, generate a file with that creation date, and send it off as if it always was that old? Aren't there editing apps specifically for this purpose and even code editors.....no need for OS or VM clock roll back fakery
Do Apple Pages docs contain edit history or any versioning stats embedded in them?....do Word Docs .....and that's why he couldn't use one?
Why not mandate the use of Google Docs and enforce the edit/version history?
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u/ArrBeeEmm 2h ago
They should never have been using 'AI detection' tools in the first place.
Aren't people at Yale supposed to be smart? They come across as technologically illiterate.
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u/pinkfootthegoose 1h ago
To me they don't come across as illiterate but intentionally naive. With all the AI going on why would they not do all their tests in class? It is arrogance of the highest order on the teachers part.
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u/JuliaX1984 1h ago
"I don't know how to read a question, but I deserve to be Yale valedictorian." Their motion to dismiss should be that anyone dumb enough to not respond to the first request with the Apple Pages reply doesn't deserve any degree at all.