Majority of students still use it, but more than half consider using AI to be cheating: study

As post-secondary students in Waterloo Region and Guelph prepare to head back into the classroom, many have AI on the brain.

A new survey from KPMG in Canada shows while the majority of students consider using artificial intelligence tools to be cheating, more than half of them still use those tools, and claim the final product as their own original work.

In fact, over 70 per cent of those surveyed say using generative AI tools will become a critical skill for the future, and want courses on how to use them.

The research also shows students claim AI has improved the quality of their school work and boosted their grades.

This of course brings up the issue of what is and isn’t considered cheating.

C.J. James, Partner and National Education Practice Leader of KPMG in Canada notes, “The growing popularity of these tools puts a lot of pressure on educators and educational institutions to quickly develop and communicate guiding principles and guardrails on how they should be used… Educators will need to become AI literate and students need to know what’s expected of them.”

Some other statistics from this research:

– 68 per cent say their grades improved after using generative AI
– 81 per cent believe all students should learn how to use generative AI tools much in the same way that coding has become a crucial skill
– 65 per cent say the more they use generative AI, the more worried they are about what it’s capable of
– 33 per cent of students who use generative AI say it saves them 1-2 hours of schoolwork a week; 28 per cent say it saves them 3-5 hours of schoolwork
– 57 per cent worry they will be caught using generative AI
– 63 per cent are not aware of any controls over their use of generative AI from their school