Understanding Artificial Intelligence's Ethically in Academics: A Review of Recent Research

AUTHOR: Anna Romanovsky

Introduction

It has been seen how artificial intelligence has recently had an increased role throughout society, specifically in the lives of students. Particularly, the AI platform ChatGPT has been used by students for help with coursework. Students may use these platforms to ask questions, make inferences, generate solutions, and much more. However, recent research suggests that some AI usage by students is unethical. Although artificial intelligence can help students with assignments, some students may get way too comfortable with their uses of these tools. For example, students may use GPT platforms to write papers, analyze data, and more. This quickly turns into plagiarism when the students use the AI written resources word for word in their school assignments in order to complete tasks with minimal effort. Due to the surging use of AI in the everyday lives of students and a deep concern by many in how students are using these platforms, the question of if students often use AI unethically is of increasing importance in research. A recent study run by Zhuo Wang , Zhaoyi Yin, Ying Zheng, Xuehui Li, and Li Zhang (2025) sought to increase understanding of these incidents. So, the main goal of their study was to understand students’ perceptions of AI platforms as well as their uses of AI. Specifically, their study focused on the specific ways students generally use AI and factors leading to academic misconduct.

Methods

To investigate these kinds of incidents more profoundly, the researchers conducted a study with 24 graduate students enrolled in an Educational Research Methods course at a university in eastern China with an average age of 20.3. 20 of the participants were female and 4 were male, with 3 students being excluded from the results due to non-participation. The approach consisted of two main parts: a pre-experimental study with questionnaires and a focus group interview. In the pre-experimental study, students used a GPT-based platform for 15 minutes to complete schoolwork and were instructed to take screenshots of their interactions with the AI platform. They also filled out multiple questionnaires examining topics like course satisfaction, intentions of using AI, AI necessity for careers, etc. In the focus groups interview, 10 students were asked questions on topics such as logic behind unethical use of AI for academics and defining misconduct. 

With these results, the researchers used statistical methods to find and analyze the frequency distribution for purposes of GPT uses as well as draw conclusions for logic behind misconduct according to students.

Results

Overall, this study found that GPT use among the students was limited and focused with 61% of students not having ever used AI before the study was even conducted. However, although students mainly used AI ethically for reasons such as asking questions or editing written papers, there were some rare cases in which students used the platform unethically, for objectives like writing full papers. After using the GPT tool, the students’ intentions of AI usage statistically improved. Additionally, in the focus group interview, students reported that they were more likely to use AI unethically throughout academics due to factors such as pressure under time or the challenge level of the work assigned. Students also communicated that unethical AI use was not very hard to hide due to the inexperience of their professors with such AI tools. It is also important to note that throughout the process of the study, factors such as perception of AI and course satisfaction had no statistically significant change from beginning to end.

Conclusion + Implications

Overall, the findings of this study have important implications for further research and efforts as promoting responsible usage of AI platforms by students while working on coursework. AI platforms appear to be occasionally used unethically by graduate students, although are mostly used to spark creativity and ideas that students can build off of on their own. As a result, sharper definitions for academic misconduct are needed to be able to effectively address unethical behaviors of students. Additionally, there is a need for more education of both students and teachers regarding academic integrity. Teachers should be instructed to be able to recognize AI usage in the work of students, while students should be educated on the standards of AI use in schoolwork. By using this study as a basis for change in the way students use AI, universities and schools in general can introduce ethical standards for AI usage early in the students’ trek through academics in order to limit students from using such platforms in ways that would be immoral and unfair to other students who take on their coursework seriously and with limited assistance.

Journal Article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48810720