Stanford Students Use ChatGPT to Cheat Across Campus as $4,000 AI Hype Sweeps School
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 17
Stanford Students Use ChatGPT to Cheat Across Campus as $4,000 AI Hype Sweeps School
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 17
Stanford seniors say AI-assisted cheating has become nearly universal, with one student writing that they know no classmate who has not used AI on some assignment.
ChatGPT arrived on campus about two months after the class of 2026, and the tools quickly spread through coursework, social life and career ambitions, reshaping how students study and behave.
Faculty were initially slow to grasp the scale of the shift, even as some discussed reviving proctored in-person exams — banned at Stanford for more than 100 years under its honor system.
The account argues AI has intensified an existing hustle culture at Stanford, where students also faced a weaker job outlook even as AI wealth and status symbols — including Jensen Huang's signed $4,000 graphics cards — gained cachet.
Are universities fighting the future by reviving century-old exams to stop AI cheating?
Is AI making a top computer science degree worthless for landing a first job?
Cheating, Detection, and Policy in the Age of AI: What the Data from Stanford and Beyond Reveal
Overview
Despite widespread concerns about AI tools like ChatGPT, recent findings show that these technologies have not caused a major rise in overall cheating rates at universities such as Stanford. Most students use AI with good intentions and do not rely on it to do all their work. Both students and teachers are now using AI in various ways, with about half of student use being direct and the other half collaborative, showing a mix of approaches. Teachers also use AI for tasks like curriculum development. This broad adoption highlights the need for updated school policies to keep up with rapid changes in AI use.