Academic Integrity & AI: How Not to Cheat

What is Academic Integrity?

Imagine you are playing a game of soccer with your friends. There are rules. You cannot pick up the ball with your hands (unless you are the goalie). If someone picks up the ball with their hands and throws it into the net, they scored a point, but they broke the rules. Did they really win? No.

School is like that game of soccer. There are rules to make sure everyone is learning fairly. This rulebook is called Academic Integrity. It is a big, fancy phrase that really just means one thing: Do your own work, and be honest.

Why Do Teachers Care So Much?

Teachers do not give you homework just to make you miserable. (Well, maybe sometimes it feels that way!) They give you homework to build your brain muscles. If you go to the gym and pay someone else to lift the heavy weights for you, your muscles will not get stronger. If you use a computer to do your homework for you, your brain does not get stronger.

When you get older, you will need those brain muscles. If you want to be a doctor, you need to know how the human body works so you don't make a mistake during surgery. If you want to build bridges, you need to know math so the bridge doesn't fall down. You cannot ask a robot to do surgery for you in the middle of an operating room!

The Calculator Rule

When calculators were first invented, teachers were terrified. They thought, "Oh no! Kids will never learn how to add or multiply again! They will just push buttons!" But that didn't happen. Instead, calculators allowed students to stop worrying about basic adding, and start focusing on advanced things like sending rockets to the moon.

However, you still have to know what to type into the calculator. If you don't know that you are supposed to multiply the length by the width to get the area of a rectangle, the calculator cannot help you.

AI is the new calculator. It is a very powerful tool. But it only works if you use it to help you think, not to do the thinking for you.

How to Use Gionth the Right Way (The Ethical Way)

We built Gionth because we want to help you learn. Here is exactly how to use our tool without breaking your school's rules:

• DO use it when you are totally stuck. If you stare at a math problem for 20 minutes and want to cry, ask Gionth. Look at the very first step it gives you. Then, close your laptop and try to finish the rest of the problem by yourself.
• DO use it to check your answers. Do your entire homework assignment first. Then, ask Gionth the same questions. Compare your answers to Gionth's answers. If they are different, look at Gionth's steps to figure out where you made a mistake.
• DO use it to explain hard words. If you are reading a book for English class and a sentence makes zero sense, ask Gionth to "Explain this sentence to a 5-year-old." It will give you a simple summary so you can keep reading.
• DO use it to study for tests. You can ask Gionth to "Give me 5 practice problems about fractions." You can solve them, and then ask Gionth if you got them right.

How NOT to Use Gionth (The Bad Way)

Here are the things you should absolutely never do. These will get you in big trouble at school.

• DO NOT use it during a test. A test is a way for a teacher to see what is inside your brain. If you use your phone during a test to ask an AI, you are lying to the teacher about what is inside your brain.
• DO NOT copy and paste essays. If your teacher asks you to write a story about George Washington, and you ask Gionth to write the whole story, you cannot put your name on it. Gionth wrote it, not you. This is called Plagiarism (stealing someone else's words).
• DO NOT copy the final answer without reading the steps. If the answer is "x = 4", do not just write "4" on your paper. Read the steps. Understand why the answer is 4.

Real-Life Examples of Integrity

Let's look at two different students, Alex and Maya. Both of them are struggling with their chemistry homework.

Alex: The Bad Example

Alex is tired. He wants to play video games. He takes a photo of his worksheet, uploads it to Gionth, and copies every single final answer onto his paper as fast as he can. He gets a 100% on the homework. But the next week, there is a quiz in class. Alex fails the quiz because he didn't actually learn anything. He gets caught cheating later because his teacher wonders how he got a 100% on the homework but a 0% on the quiz.

Maya: The Good Example

Maya is also tired, but she wants to understand. She uses Gionth for the first question. She reads the steps carefully. "Oh!" she says, "I forgot to balance the equation first!" Maya puts her phone away and does the rest of the worksheet by herself. She gets a 90% on the homework. The next week, she gets a 95% on the quiz because she actually learned the concept.

The Teacher's Secret: They Know When You Cheat

A lot of students think they are very sneaky. They think teachers are old and don't understand technology. This is completely false.

Teachers read hundreds of essays every single year. They know exactly how you talk and how you write. If you usually misspell words like "definitely" and write short sentences, but suddenly you hand in an essay that uses words like "furthermore," "paradigm," and "tapestry," your teacher will know immediately that a robot wrote it.

Also, schools now have their own software that detects AI. Just like there are programs to write essays, there are programs designed to catch essays written by AI. It is not worth the risk. A bad grade is better than getting suspended for cheating.