30% of Students Copy, Paste AI-Generated Answers for Schoolwork; Majority of Students Do Not Know How Fact-Check Answers

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:35 JST, September 15, 2024

Nearly 30% of high school and university students who have used generative artificial intelligence have copied and pasted AI-generated answers to their schoolwork, according to a survey conducted by a team of researchers from Sendai University.

The survey was conducted online from March 21-25, and 4,323 high school, university, graduate and vocational students nationwide provided responses.

The percentage of respondents who have used generative AI was 30.3% — with high school students reaching 30.3% and university and graduate students totaling 34.9%.

About one in four respondents said they use generative AI at least twice a week, while 4.8% of high school students and 3.1% of university and graduate students said they use it daily.

Of the generative AI users, 62.7% said they had used AI-generated answers to complete assignments or reports.

Moreover, 27.8% of the respondents said they have copy and pasted AI-generated responses directly to schoolwork they have submitted to their teacher.

Meanwhile, 70% of the students felt the need to fact-check AI-generated answers, but 63.8% did not know how to do so.

The survey also received responses from 2,616 faculty members.

Asked about what was problematic with AI, 48.8% of university and graduate school faculty members said it was assignments and reports that cannot be determined whether they are copied from AI or written by students.

While 44.3% said it was submitted papers suspected to have been written using AI, 42.4% said that it was teachers’ lack of knowledge about AI.

“We have found that students hold a positive view of generative AI and use it without thinking carefully,” said Prof. Nagayuki Saito at Sendai University, the leader of the research team and expert in media studies. “It’s necessary to put rules in place so that we are assisted by AI, not manipulated.”