By Ahmed Abdelsalam
Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell has resigned after a faculty committee concluded he used artificial intelligence to shape his writing, including a guest column in The Washington Post about AI cheating.
Faculty Investigation Finds AI Use
The announcement Wednesday comes as colleges nationwide grapple with transforming teaching amid the rise of AI tools. Dartmouth, which calls itself the birthplace of AI, was hosting a conference marking the 70th anniversary of the field's inception at the school in 1956.
University President Sian Leah Beilock said keeping Dartmouth at the forefront of AI requires modeling transparency and human judgment. She stated Schnell's departure was his decision and the school wishes him well.
Schnell’s Background
The controversy began after news outlet Semafor ran guest columns through an AI filter. Schnell's August column in the Post, titled “Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem,” was found to be entirely written by AI. Schnell initially said he used ChatGPT to refine a few arguments but that the column was based on his own thinking.
The Dartmouth student newspaper then ran other publications by Schnell through an AI detector. Writing predating ChatGPT’s 2022 release was human-written, but recent writing showed high rates of AI use. Schnell told the paper he uses AI for language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization, and making writing processes more efficient. That statement itself was flagged as AI-written.
In a follow-up, Schnell said he developed the substance and wrote a draft, then used an AI tool to assist with language and clarity. The faculty committee found he used AI to “meaningfully alter his writing” and “was not forthcoming about his AI use.”
Schnell, a Venezuelan-born mathematical biologist, previously held leadership roles at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, and Indiana University.
