A new technology has corrupted Drew University, with catastrophic repercussions for students, professors and the university’s national reputation. ScienceGPT, an AI tool designed to help students cheat their way through science classes, prompted an academic integrity crisis that Drew is struggling to reckon with.
The chaos began when two organic chemistry students sought an easy method to pass the pre-med weed-out class. John Smith (’25) and Jane Doe (’25), who requested anonymity, have dreamed of attending medical school ever since childhood. However, their organic chemistry class threatened to jeopardize those dreams. With scores of 21 percent and 1 percent respectively on their first organic chemistry exam, Smith and Doe knew that they needed to ace their next exam to preserve any hope of pursuing their desired career.
“I’m a biology major, so I have to become a doctor,” said Smith. “If I don’t, I’ll be unemployed and depressed for the rest of my life. I also want to make a lot of money.”
The night before their second exam, Smith and Doe hatched a plan: They would create an AI tool that could name and generate diagrams of organic molecules. In other words, Smith and Doe would be able to draw compounds like cloroethylmethyl-4-fluoropropylsec-butyl-2,2-dimethylisopropyl-7-orthoetherpropanoate with one click. This website could also write essays about science, a useful feature given that many poor writers major in STEM fields only to find 10-page papers awaiting them. Smith and Doe stayed up until 3:47 a.m. designing this powerful technology, displaying an impeccable work ethic that could have been applied to studying. Smith and Doe are terrible at naming things, so they decided to call their website ScienceGPT after a popular AI chatbot.
When asked whether she thought using this new AI tool to cheat on her exam was unethical, Doe said, “I don’t think so. Every college student cheated during the pandemic. Besides, people cheat all the time. Look at Operation Varsity Blues, for example.”
Although Smith and Doe took every precaution to covertly reference their phones during the exam, they were nevertheless caught by their organic chemistry professor, Dr. Ethel Benzene, who threatened to give them a zero and permanently ruin their chances of attending medical school. However, after learning about the immense potential of ScienceGPT, Benzene made a deal with Smith and Doe: the students would receive a passing grade on the exam if Drew’s science professors were allowed to use the technology. Of course, Smith and Doe agreed.
Since science professors also hate writing 10-page papers, they experimented with ScienceGPT’s essay-writing feature. Dr. Molly Cool decided to help her students by creating a glossary for the 6,452,568,232 acronyms in biochemistry. Dr. Bunsen Burner, on the other hand, wrote a letter to the “Breaking Bad” fans in his chemistry class explaining why the show is not scientifically accurate, emphasizing that hydrofluoric acid is not a strong acid and cannot dissolve bodies or bathtubs.
Chaos erupted, however, when inorganic chemistry professor Dr. Elle C. Tron learned of ScienceGPT’s existence. Long-opposed to organic chemistry’s insistence on the incorrect and oversimplified concepts of resonance, Lewis structures and hybridization, Tron generated a paper eviscerating organic chemistry. Deeply offended by what she perceived as a personal attack, Benzene fired back with an essay that declared inorganic chemistry irrelevant. The controversy soon morphed into an all-out war between the two professors that was fought by lab sabotage.
“Organic chemistry is wrong. Period,” said Tron.
When asked why she continues to teach inaccurate concepts to her students, Benzene said, “50% of students fail organic chemistry already. That number will increase exponentially if I make them draw molecular orbital diagrams for every single bond in an organic molecule.”
At this point, knowledge of ScienceGPT had leaked to Drew’s student body, who began committing flagrant academic integrity violations using the AI tool. Sometimes, professors could detect whether AI had completed an assignment. For example, when ScienceGPT was asked to define a mole of carbon atoms, it returned an image of Scalopus aquaticus (which is, in fact, made of carbon atoms). ScienceGPT also drew organic compounds with perfect hexagons, a feat that no human could ever achieve. For the most part, however, professors struggled to identify whether a student had used ScienceGPT, creating an academic integrity crisis.
As the number of ScienceGPT users increased, Smith and Doe realized that they could monetize their creation, so they introduced a $5 monthly subscription fee. Already enraged over having to pay for printing again, Drew students launched a full-scale revolt, refusing to attend classes or complete homework assignments until the subscription fee was lifted.
Facing a civil war in the chemistry department and a student strike, the administration finally took action. In a strongly worded email, Dr. Geen O. Micks, the head of Drew’s science department, banned the use of ScienceGPT on Drew’s campus. “If students are caught using this technology, they will be severely punished. We won’t bother defining that punishment because we can’t detect when this technology is being used and because students will continue to use it anyway,” Micks stated. The administration also required professors to include a warning about AI tools in their syllabi, which will likely be ineffective because students do not read syllabi.
The future of ScienceGPT remains to be determined. Confidential sources revealed that Drew’s administration may sell ScienceGPT to other universities to earn more money. In the meantime, the use of ScienceGPT has seemingly subsided in the wake of the chaos it generated. Although most of the Drew students who cheated using ScienceGPT went unpunished, Smith and Doe were expelled from Drew University, and their dreams of attending medical school were destroyed forever.
If you would like to try using ScienceGPT, you can find it at www.notreal.com.
A.U. Gold is a first-year majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology with perfect academic integrity 😉.
Featured image courtesy of Pexels.com (edited by Elizabeth_)
