Proving What You Wrote Is Yours in the Age of AI

We are living in times when AI is becoming a daily tool we use at work and at school.

A lot of students support themselves by using AI to learn new things, quickly find information, and extend their knowledge.

I am from a generation who finish schools and University before AI existed. During my Uni times, it was the Internet boom, and access to information started pushing out the need to visit a library to gain knowledge. Yet, despite all of that, I am proud that all my hard work put towards my education was my own.

In current times, a lot of students want to go the easy route. Same as with the workplace, where it’s hard to find a hard-working employee on very demanding job role for an average salary.

People no longer want to work hard to earn money. Everybody is looking into the easiest route earing tones of money by doing the minimum. It’s not working like that, at least not for the majority of us. If you are the person who thinks that’s how it’s working, if you are not a millionaire right now, then you are delusional.

Same with education. Knowledge that you gain is for you to be a better person in future. You’re learning stuff to use in your future life. If you decide to go the easy route and ask AI to write you a work that you will just copy and paste, then submit to a tutor, there is something significantly wrong here.

You can do this; nobody is stopping you (almost) from doing that, but how much are you learning from that?

Teachers know that, and in current AI times, they need to bring their own tools to fight it. The problem is that the tools, that they are using are mostly useless.

The tools that teachers are using are, in many cases, unsanctioned, unverified and most of the time are highlighting text, that is 100% your own work, as a 90% written by AI!

This is a total joke of what is happening right now, and that must change.

The issue is so significant that it is discouraging the genuine students, putting a lot of effort into searching for information and writing their own work, where the feedback received from the tutor is that 70% of their work is AI and they need to re-write it!

Be resilient and confident.

Do not let teachers tell you something that is not true, especially when you are 100% sure that your work is your own!

If you are a foreigner whose English language wasn’t the first language you learned, the way and how you write and how you compose sentences is way different from native English speakers.

As a foreigner, your work is more likely to trigger a warning by AI detectors than the native English speaker who wrote their own work with their own words.

Same as me, we are slightly different. We formulate sentences and use words differently. Sometimes we are using very refined words, triggering a warning that this work is way above our age. This is crazy!

As always, there are two sides to the same coin.

Teachers need to fight with “cheaters” who think that they do not need to work hard. The problem is that they are punishing the genuine students along the way.

Let’s take, for example an unauthorised AI checker tool from justdone.com/ai-detector that I know that some teachers are using to check if the work is genuine.

This is a commercial tool, offering an AI checker for free, and on purpose (in their interest) they bump AI warning to offer their paid services to Humanise your own work – the work that you, a human, wrote in the first place!

I took multiple texts that I wrote down, my email that I sent, which I know that I wrote in 100% from my head, and put them through this checker. The results frighten me and really make me angry. I see daily people doing educational work, only to be discouraged from writing from their head, as what they wrote is marked as AI generated!

All my work, texts (and I put multiple of them to check), was highlighted between 70 and 100% as AI-generated.

That’s totally absurd!

If I were a student now, wrote a few pages of my work and got feedback from my tutor that I used AI to do this and my work is rejected, I would be furious!

It’s not only annoying, but also totally discouraging people from doing genuine work by themselves, as others, who use AI tools and Humaniser tools, by doing the bare minimum, are accepted and moving forward.

Come on, teachers, you need to do better!

As educators, you are shaping the future of this country. Though your poor work in fighting AI-generated content, by using inaccurate tools, you are promoting students who are doing the bare minimum to pass, that’s something wrong!

If somebody is writing a document about some laws and regulations, as an example, it’s obvious that their work will trigger an AI-generated content warning. They will likely be quoting parts of the law or using similar wording as they learned. Sometimes it is not possible to clearly rewrite something without losing content, and because of that, the student will be punished.

I understand the problem. I put a lot of hard work into my day-to-day work. I support myself currently with AI, like everybody else. In a way, I am using it; I am still proud of the work that I am presenting at the end. I know, where it’s required, my work is my own and despite your AI checkers saying differently, I know what the truth is.

If, indeed, you need to use AI checkers tools, make sure you use the ones that are approved and accurate in the first place. Take into consideration the student background, and if you still have a doubt, check it in other means and not just simply ask them, for a 3rd time, to dilute their own work just to meet the “pass” point of an inaccurate AI checker!

Come on, we need to do better.

I been an academic teacher for a very short period, and I been a student as well. My work daily is based on creating things with my head and with materials that are available. I know when you can go easy route and when you need to put hard work into it. But if hard work is not respected, the society that we are building now will end up in a land of “con men”. These con men will later govern this country. Do we really want this to happen? It’s already happening in other countries, but do not need to happen here. We are better at that!

We are the people who shape the future generation, so we need to shape it correctly, even in the challenging AI times we are living in now.

Using a tool like AI in a smart way will become a skill, in the same way that using Google was when I first started interacting with it during my studies.

Not all written things are AI-generated. If you need to use tools to check that, make sure your tools are doing their job correctly on first place.

Students, if you are 100% sure that your work is your own, develop courage and resilience to stand your ground, defend yourself, as this is the most important skill that you will need in your life.

According to the inaccurate JustDone AI Detector, the text above—despite being written by a human (me) — is flagged as 91% AI-generated. What a total joke!