In writing courses, where original work is at the center of the class, AI is often explicitly prohibited or strictly prohibited. But in practice, those rules are unevenly enforced. Students use it anyway, and professors are left to interpret what crosses the line and what doesn’t. Papers that once took hours are now considered manageable, even challenging, by many students. An easy “A” may indeed be within reach.
how does this work? In most cases, students are not simply pasting prompts and turning in AI-generated essays as their work. They use AI in small ways that are hard to define and even harder to detect. It’s easy to refer to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Cloud to rewrite sentences, smooth out structure, or “write it in my writing style.”
More than half of US college students frequently use AI to edit or improve their writing, according to Lumina Foundation-Gallup Research Findings Released on 2 April.
Even when instructors doubt the use of AI beyond grammar and spelling, proving it is another matter. “Research shows that individuals are not very good at distinguishing between AI-generated and non-AI-generated text, especially when only partially assisted in writing,” says Sarah Madsen Hardy, director of BU’s College of Arts & Sciences writing program.
The same challenge arises in Michael Dowding’s classes. There’s no “foolproof” way to detect AI, says Dowding, a master lecturer in BU’s College of Communication and director of its writing program. When there is reason to suspect that a submitted assignment has been manipulated, he says, “we must proceed as if it were authentic writing” because there is no conclusive evidence.
Elena Kalestinova, director of MIT’s Writing and Communication Center, says instructors can add statements to their syllabi about generic AI being prohibited. But generally, “Instructors don’t police. We have no control. We have no leverage. There’s no way I can enforce it.” Instead, instructors focus on pointing out areas for “improvement” when they suspect a student has crossed the limits of generative AI use.
Dowding has adapted his courses to ask students to complete writing assignments individually on their laptops under his supervision, in order to establish what he calls “assurance of authenticity”. Those early samples become the basis for comparison should later works vary sharply in tone or quality. Although this approach can provide a baseline, it does not provide a complete solution. It is time consuming, many tasks are difficult to accomplish, and yet it depends on the judgment of the professional rather than objective evidence.
Making the situation more complex, widely used AI detection tools can generate false positive rates According to a Stanford University study of college-level essays, in some cases as high as 60 percent, while slightly modifying the text could reduce the detection rate to 13 percent. The rules exist, but the tools to enforce them often do not exist.
Added to this challenging mix: AI is rapidly becoming a standard tool in many workplaces, where employers expect new hires to understand – and use – the applications of AI in their industry.
This causes problems in the learning phase. “Employers focus on outputs and metrics, and they’re not concerned about developing your intelligence,” says Dowding. “In many educational settings, generative AI can be a wonderful tool, but not in teaching someone to write.”
This tension leaves students caught between conflicting expectations. As more people use AI for writing, the pressure changes. What once felt like cutting corners now feels like continuing. In practice, students are left to decide for themselves whether to use AI or not. “It would take a very disciplined young person to say, ‘I’m not going to use this,'” says Dowding.
At the moment, writing courses are still built around a single goal: to teach students how to think through writing. “This is a cognitive laziness that develops if we rely too much on AI,” says MIT’s Kalestinova. “(Writing) is a long, complex process, and every single step is cognitive where we engage our brain.”
For writing program director Madsen Hardy, “the human element is more important now than ever” – it’s “the personal perspective or taking on things, or the creativity that people bring that becomes more important in the writing process.”
As AI becomes more embedded in the way students work, the gap between what writing courses are meant to teach and how students complete them is no longer theoretical — and it’s reshaping those courses in ways that institutions are still figuring out how to respond to.
“Writing is thinking,” says Dowding, “and when you outsource writing, you’re outsourcing thinking.”
This is a cost that few students are willing to pay. Not all at once, but gradually – line by line, draft by draft – until writing without AI feels natural.
Seungmin Song is a senior majoring in journalism at Boston University. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.
