AI for Me, but Not for Thee

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AI for Me, but Not for Thee [email protected] Thu, 09/24/2026 - 03:00 AM Dartmouth’s provost raises a tension we should examine. Byline(s) John Warner AI for Me, but Not for Thee [email protected] Thu, 09/24/2026 - 03:00 AM D…

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Inside Higher Ed

Dartmouth College provost Santiago Schnell no longer appears to write his opinion pieces and academic articles.

This news is the byproduct of an investigation by Dartmouth college student journalists piggy-backing on an investigation by the Semafor website, which tried to determine which guest opinion pieces in major newspapers had been AI-written as determined by the Pangram AI-checking program.

We should note, that as I, and others, have explored elsewhere, Pangram is not infallible, and small tweaks in the text can shift determinations from 100% AI to 100% human, but Provost Schnell is not denying using AI to produce text that he warrants as reflecting his output.

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Via email, he told the Dartmouth journalists that he deploys AI for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”

The email Provost Schnell sent to the journalists was judged 100% AI-written. When asked about this, he replied that he “developed the substance and wrote a draft … used an Al tool to assist with language and clarity, taking on several suggestions (including reworded sentences), before reading it through, making minor changes and sending it to you with my signature.”

He added, “I am fully responsible for any text under my signature."

Indeed, but he didn’t write that text. At best, Provost Schnell has swapped out writing for AI-assisted text generation. The “100%-AI written” scores suggest that he may instead have gone a further step toward fully automated text production.

This is not sitting well with at least some students. In an opinion piece, Eli Moyse, a senior government studies and creative writing major calls for Provost Schnell to be fired, highlighting what he believes to be an untenable hypocrisy of Schnell using AI to produce a Washington Post op-ed about students cheating by using AI.

Moyse calls Schnell’s actions an “insult.” As the chief academic officer of Dartmouth College, using AI to produce text without disclosing this is the kind of actions that would land students in some significant measure of trouble.

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Jeff Sharlet, a Dartmouth writing professor, writing in The Chronicle in July said that his students “hate” AI, even as they find themselves compelled to use it.

I can’t predict what is going to happen to Provost Schnell, but he may be on solid ground given that Dartmouth president Sian Leah Beilock published an opinion piece of her own at The Atlantic earlier this month titled, “Why I Want More AI at Dartmouth.”

In the piece, President Beilock offers a very sensible stance: “If universities hope to remain relevant in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, they should strive to guide students to understand and use these tools productively.”

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No doubt, part of this productive use involves ethical considerations around using these tools, considerations which Provost Schnell seems to have overlooked in this particular case in his desire for increased efficiency.

In the piece, President Beilock also criticizes some AI refusers saying, “But rather than tackling this disruptive change and the resulting anxiety head-on, many educators are trying to make AI simply go away.”

Setting aside what I think is dubious framing around refusal being an effort to make AI “go away,” I think she is correct about the necessity of taking these issues head-on. So, let’s tease this out a bit with some questions we should be exploring in this particular domain of the intersection of human labor and AI assistance.

Is there a meaningful difference between human writing and AI-assisted document production?

Regular readers know that my stance on this question is completely, entirely, permanently, yes. I know this because that last sentence is one that an AI model would not write, but which I took great pleasure in doing, enjoying the redundancy and the (arguable) “rule”-violating choice of stringing those adverbs together.

Writing is not just something that results in the product of a final text, but an experience in and of itself. Engaging in automation-assisted (or fully automated) text generation via LLMs is to either deny or distort this experience.

I believe the experience of writing matters, is in fact essential to our humanity, and so, yes, AI-assisted text production is not the same thing.

Is it meaningful for the chief academic officer to choose to engage in automation-assisted (or fully automated) text generation for public writing?

It does not appear to be meaningful to Provost Schnell, personally, who, according to the Dartmouth investigation, quite successfully published his writing prior to the appearance of LLMs capable of automating text production, but has now switched to an automated process.

It appears to be very much meaningful to at least some Dartmouth students, particularly those at the student paper who, contra President Beilock, “don’t want more AI at Dartmouth.”

Personally, I have some concerns for Provost Schnell experiencing the phenomenon of “self-alienation” where his choice to automate significant portions of his labor may remove the connective tissue that makes our work meaningful and even pleasurable. I have witnessed this in others. It is a real danger.

When institutional authorities publish work under their names, should they disclose AI use?

I think the easy answer to this is indisputably, entirely, unquestionably, yes.

If this is now going to be part of the regular practice of academic leadership, they owe the communities they serve full honesty around how these communications that they stand behind were produced.

It’s possible that AI-assisted text production will become normalized in these spaces, particularly when it comes to the kind of boilerplate statements we expect in bureaucratic contexts, but I gotta say that if I was one of those Dartmouth student journalists and I knew that the provost had used AI to respond to our inquiries, I’d be pretty frosty about it.

Is this hypocrisy on Provost Schnell’s behalf?

Less than a week prior to President Beilock’s call for more AI at Dartmouth, The Atlantic ran a piece by John Paul Rollert, an instructor at both Harvard and the Booth School at University of Chicago, titled “A Society of Cheats,” calling out students who use AI as “cutting corners,” labeling these choices not just a problem of cheating, but an actual moral disaster.

It’s possible that we could view Provost Schnell’s AI use as a positive example of President Beilock’s call for “more AI.” Here is an established, accomplished professional who has proven his abilities without the aid of AI automation using the tools to produce text more efficiently.

Students, on the other hand, are learners who have not yet proven to have developed the capacities that Provost Schnell already possesses, the necessary judgment to ask for AI-generated text and then stand behind it with confidence as the reflection of his own thoughts, feelings and communications.

I worry about accepting this kind of framing, that AI as a tool is something you get to earn your way into and that institutions can comfortably navigate spaces where AI’s use is prohibited for students but allowed for faculty when they are producing the same genre of written artifact (essays, research, opinion, etc.).

I’ve argued that the “worst” use case of generative AI is writing because of the way automated text production inevitably distorts the writing process and the experience of writing. And what’s happening at Dartmouth suggests to me that the meaning of outsourcing this human labor has not been sufficiently considered by the people who are inviting more AI into their institution.

I actually think removing Provost Schnell as a short-term attempt to quell student displeasure would be a mistake because what he’s provided is an opportunity for the community to discuss what they value and why.

There’s an invitation and opportunity here. Dartmouth should seize it.

출처: Inside Higher Ed

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원문 게시일: 2026-09-24T07:00:00Z

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