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‘I Love Normal Cheaters Now’ – Professors Share How AI Is Changing Student Assessment

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A couple of months ago, Dr Jonathan Fine – a lecturer in German Studies – shared an X post that made me laugh, then wince.

“I love normal cheaters now,” the academic wrote. “A student admitted to getting help from a person on an assignment, and I didn’t even penalise him because I was just so happy it wasn’t AI.”

It’s a sentiment I’ve seen echoed by other professors since.

And in a recent TikTok, Dr Steven Buckley, a lecturer in Media Digital Sociology who also helps his university to assess cases of academic misconduct, shared that he’d seen a dissertation with what appeared to be “hallucinated” references.

We spoke to Dr Fine and Dr Buckley about their experiences.

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I love normal cheaters now. A student admitted to getting help from a person on an assignment, and I didn’t even penalize him because I was just so happy it wasn’t AI.

— Jonathan Fine (@jonathanbfine) April 25, 2025

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I love normal cheaters now. A student admitted to getting help from a person on an assignment, and I didn’t even penalize him because I was just so happy it wasn’t AI.

— Jonathan Fine (@jonathanbfine) April 25, 2025

Dr Fine says he’s been “paranoid” about machine learning for a long time

Dr Fine, who teaches in a language not native to most of his students, says he doesn’t think his experiences are typical of those teaching the humanities.

“I teach German, so I’ve been paranoid about machine translation ever since I started teaching,” he said.

“That’s always been my default attitude when reading student writing, so AI hasn’t been a major change for me or a big loss of trust in the students.”

Still, he says, “I don’t allow students to use AI, and I tell them at the beginning of class how awkward the conversation is when they’re caught, but they use it anyway.”

He assigns a lot of in-class writing, which means it’s clear when AI has been used by a student. The lecturer says it reads very differently from their usual work.

“When I catch a student using AI, I try to use it as a teaching moment,” he told HuffPost UK.

“I talk to the students about how my job is to help them improve, but I really can’t help a computer. If students were to reoffend, then I’d have to escalate the situation as a violation of academic policies.”

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Every justification I come across for the widespread academic use of artificial intelligence presupposes an ideal student user that does not exist. https://t.co/5TF4YNaYpe

— Jonathan Fine (@jonathanbfine) June 19, 2025

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Every justification I come across for the widespread academic use of artificial intelligence presupposes an ideal student user that does not exist. https://t.co/5TF4YNaYpe

— Jonathan Fine (@jonathanbfine) June 19, 2025