Unit 03 · Is this cheating?

Week 4 of the program · 45 minutes · 10th and 11th grade · every project, alone or in a group · almost no screens.

What you’re going to do

A rule. Yours, or your team’s, in a single sentence: it’s cheating when…, because…. A 60-second podcast script that defends it to someone who thinks the opposite. And at the end, the same rule applied to your project: what would be cheating there?

• 10th: from what bothers them: people who use AI to get homework out of the way.
• 11th: from what they do: using it for homework and to get answers.

Why it’s worth it

Everyone has an opinion about this. Few have a reason. The rule you write today is the raw material for the rules of this room, which the group signs next week. And in your project, it decides what the AI does and what it doesn’t.

How the session goes

• Anticipate. First you receive, in private, one line with what we understood of your project: “did I read you right?”. You can correct it. Then you write: “cheating is when…”.
• Act. No screens. Eight made-up cases, read aloud. Your table places them on a line, from “clearly not” to “clearly yes”, getting up to put them there. You write your rule. Then the script, by hand or dictated.
• Reflect. Scripts are read against the criteria. Did what you anticipated come out? Did the instruction get better, or did the question get better?
• Your project. On your card, one line: “In my project it would be cheating for the AI to…”. And you check your division of work: if something you put under “what the AI does” turns out to be cheating, it moves to “what I do” or “what I decide”.
• No screens. From your hypothesis until your rule holds or changes, there’s no phone, computer or AI: you think, discuss, move the cards around and write. As it closes, your table decides whether it will compare its script with a machine, what it will ask and what always stays in your hands.

The criteria, as questions

• C1. Does the rule fit in one sentence and make sense on its own?
• C2. Is there a reason, and not just a stance? (11th: does it say what someone who doesn’t think loses?)
• C3. Can you apply it to your project: does it name something the AI shouldn’t do there?

And during the listening, one more question: could someone who thinks the opposite hear your script without feeling accused?

If your project is without AI

The rule and the script are the same for everyone. In your project, the line is “In my project it would be cheating to…”: copy someone else’s work without credit, have another person do the part that’s yours, pass off someone else’s source as yours. And you check your division of work against that rule. Nobody asks you to compare your script with a machine. In the listening, the question for you is: what did you decide, and why?

If you want to compare with a machine

At the end, whoever wants to compares their script with an assistant’s. Just one generation per table, text only, counted on the board, and before it, you check aloud that the instruction carries no names and no real cases. Then you read out where the machine failed and ask: “What did the AI decide here that a person should have decided?”

For inspiration

• Is this cheating? — the room gives its opinion first; the machine, after.
• If you want to compare your script with a machine’s: library assistant.

Careful

The cases are made up. Here nobody tells a case of their own or of anyone else.

If you haven’t lived this Unit yet, don’t open it.

This is a plan: the Unit hasn’t run yet.