Martin Hohenberg

AI Detection In Academia Is Misguided

In the age of artificial intelligence, the academic world is scrambling. Not to understand, not to adapt — but to control. AI detectors are now being used to determine whether a student’s work is “authentic.” The irony is suffocating: we are turning to machines to decide whether a human used a machine.

At first glance, this may seem reasonable. Academic integrity is important, after all. But once you start punishing students for what a tool guesses might be AI-generated content—despite major AI detection providers explicitly warning against such use—you create a feedback loop that undermines the very foundation of education.

The Honest Student’s Dilemma

Here is what happens in practice: honest students, whose work happens to “sound like AI,” are flagged. These students now face an impossible task: figuring out what, exactly, makes their self-written content trigger the system. Instead of focusing on the quality of their arguments, they spend time trying to “sound human.” That extra cognitive load comes at a cost—even your best student only has 24 hours in a day.

Eventually, these students face a bleak choice:

  • Accept worse grades.
  • Spend hours post-editing their work to pass a detector instead of improving their ideas.
  • Or—ironically—use AI to write the essay, then humanize it.

With option 2 and 3 leading to virtually the same output, but option 3 being much faster, which of these options do you think they’ll choose?

And when that becomes the norm, detector tools adapt. They begin flagging “AI that’s been edited to sound human,” increasing false positives. The net tightens. The game escalates. And all the while, we are drifting further from the original purpose of academic writing: to evaluate learning.

AI Is Already Here—and Often Invisible

We must also acknowledge the obvious: AI is already deeply embedded in student workflows.

  • Grammarly.
  • Copilot.
  • Google Docs smart suggestions.
  • Translation tools.
  • Spellcheckers.

Are we going to punish students for accepting a grammar suggestion from Microsoft Word?

Many of these tools are invisible or automatic. Students might not even know they’re using AI. Worse, institutions often fail to define what “using AI” even means. Is brainstorming with ChatGPT cheating? What about checking tone in Grammarly? Translating a paragraph from your native language?

Unless we’re ready to ban all AI-assisted writing tools - and enforce that ban consistently - we must accept that some degree of augmentation is normal. To pretend otherwise is not academic rigor. It’s academic hypocrisy.

Surveillance Is Not Knowledge Transfer

Some institutions, in a bid to maintain control, respond by demanding handwritten essays or supervised in-class writing. This is a step backward, not forward. It disadvantages neurodivergent students, non-native speakers, those with anxiety, and deep thinkers who need time to formulate. It reduces writing to a performance under stress, rather than a process of reflection, revision, and growth.

Do we really believe our students do their best thinking under fluorescent lights, with some proctor watching them write by hand?

This isn’t about maintaining standards. It’s about maintaining the illusion of control.

Don’t Grade Papers. Grade Learning.

Essays are not sacred texts. They are tools to demonstrate understanding. If a student uses AI to brainstorm, revise, or clarify — but still shows clear comprehension and intellectual effort — shouldn’t that count? If the goal is to assess learning, then the method of composition is secondary. What matters is whether the student has grown.

And if we suspect dishonesty? We don’t need a detector. We need a dialogue. Ask them:

“Tell me about your argument. Why did you structure it this way? What sources did you consider?”

A short conversation can often reveal more about authorship and understanding than any AI flag ever could.

In fact, in an AI-rich world, the value of oral defense and iterative feedback increases. These practices cannot be gamed easily. They build trust, respect, and accountability.

What We Should Be Doing Instead

Instead of building walls, we should be redesigning the classroom:

  • Integrate AI as a subject, not just a threat. Teach students how to use it ethically and critically. Many university courses already have a mandatory ‘academic writing’ class. Let’s expand that with a lecture on ethical AI use.
  • Design assignments that AI can’t do well. Encourage reflection, connection, and personal experience.
  • Incorporate oral defenses, drafts, and peer reviews. Make the process as important as the product.
  • Reward insight over polish. Students shouldn’t have to write like a machine to avoid being accused of using one.

In short: focus on learning. Not detection. Not punishment. Not fear.

Conclusion

AI is not the enemy. Misuse is. But punishing students based on probabilistic guesses from flawed tools is not a defense of academic integrity—it is a betrayal of it.

If we want to cultivate thinkers, we must stop acting like guards.
If we want students to care about learning, we must give them a system that values understanding more than formatting.

Education should not be a game of cat and mouse.

Let’s build something better.

References

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