Dartmouth Provost Resigns Amid AI Writing Accusations
A faculty committee found that Santiago Schnell used artificial intelligence in his writing, including a Washington Post guest column on AI cheating.
Dartmouth College's provost, Santiago Schnell, has resigned following findings by a faculty committee that he used artificial intelligence to shape his writing. The accusations include the use of AI in a guest column published in The Washington Post concerning AI cheating.
The departure of Schnell, a senior administrator at the Ivy League university, comes as educational institutions nationwide are addressing the integration of AI tools into academic work and the challenges they pose to traditional teaching methods.
Dartmouth, which considers itself the birthplace of AI research originating from a 1956 summer project, is currently hosting events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the field. University President Sian Leah Beilock emphasized the importance of leadership modeling transparency and human judgment in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Concerns were initially raised after the news outlet Semafor employed an AI filter on guest columns in major newspapers. Schnell's August column in The Washington Post, titled “Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem,” was identified by the filter as being entirely written by AI. Schnell had previously stated that he used ChatGPT to "refine a few arguments" but maintained the column reflected his own thoughts.
Further scrutiny by The Dartmouth, the college's student newspaper, analyzed other publications by Schnell using AI detection tools. While writing that predated ChatGPT's public release in 2022 was found to be human-generated, recent writings showed a high rate of AI usage. Schnell had explained his use of AI for "language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient." Notably, even this explanation was later found by an AI detector to be AI-written.
In response to the subsequent investigation, the faculty committee concluded that Schnell had used AI to "meaningfully alter his writing" and had not been transparent about its use. Schnell, a mathematical biologist, previously held academic and leadership positions at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, and Indiana University.