Two Leeds unis are in the top 10 UK universities for handing out AI cheating penalties

This comes as one in six British students admitted to cheating


Two Leeds universities were in the top 10 UK unis for handing out penalties for AI cheating.

Leeds Beckett came in second place, handing out 395 sanctions, and Leeds Trinity came in seventh with 119.

However, the University of Leeds only reported seven penalties.

With university starting up again this September, AI platform AIPRM sent more than 150 freedom of information requests to UK universities to discover just how many students had been caught using AI to cheat in the last two years.

According to 80 universities’ results, more than four in five (82.5 per cent) UK universities have investigated students for AI cheating with Birmingham City University giving out the greatest number of penalties (402) over the last two years.

It appears that the university suffered most when artificial intelligence first gained popularity with 307 of those instances taking place in 2022-2023.

However, some universities reported as low as zero infringements such as the University of Cambridge, London and Gloucestershire.

On behalf of AIRPM, a prompt management library, Christopher C Cemper offered advice on how to ethically use AI during university studies.

He said: “Use AI as a friend or sidekick, not a substitute for writing up your work.”

“AI can be a great source for locating academic research, generating ideas and summarising articles, but make sure that when utilising AI tools, you always ensure that the work remains your own and maintain originality. For example, AI can assist with grammar and style of writing, but do not use it to write an entire paper or section of your assignment.”

“Use AI as a guide to understanding and upgrading your skill set, but make sure to always apply your own critical thinking skills to your work and there remains a human touch. But don’t present AI use as your own work or without proper attribution, or this could land you a hefty penalty for plagiarism.”

Featured image via Google Maps

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