In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat, including by writing papers for them or rephrasing text written by others. The apps promise to help them avoid accusations of misconduct by scanning their work before they submit it, allowing them to rewrite passages identified as A.I. Even honest students are often willing to fork over $10 to $20 per month for premium tools, since A.I. detectors sometimes flag legitimate work.

The snippet above is from a recent article in the NYT.

What is the point in coming to a university to sprend all the time letting a machine do your job? The final piece of paper will be effectively worthless if one is even able to get it…

My biggest worry is that the AI detection race that comes from all this noise, is increasingly harming all the students that are putting in the effort to learn and are scared shitless of being flagged as AIs. There is growing evidence that they are purposely unlearning how to write properly and instead focusing on refining a style that avoids the false positive, in a useless neverending race against the tool.

I am struggling to see a solution at the moment, besides resisting to buy into this hype and the false promises of these companies. And especially we should never accept to buy the product of companies so shady that, let me quote again from the above, while “selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat”.