Learning, not outsourcing: cheating, errors and rules

AI can help you progress very quickly, or make you believe you're progressing when you're learning nothing. The whole difference comes down to one question: who is doing the thinking? This last lesson is about the traps and how to avoid them, whether you're a pupil, a student, an adult learner or a parent.

1. What's allowed depends on your school

There is no single rule. Depending on the school, the university, the teacher and even the assignment, AI may be banned, tolerated for certain steps (finding ideas, fixing spelling) or actually required. Before using it for graded work:

• Read the rules or the course guidelines and, if in doubt, ask your teacher. It's always better than guessing.
• If it's allowed, be transparent: many schools and universities ask you to state how AI was used. Note it down as you go.
• Handing in a text written by AI as your own, when that's not allowed, is cheating, just like plagiarism.

Tools that claim to detect AI-written text are not reliable: they get it wrong, in both directions. That's no reason to cheat, nor to panic if you're wrongly suspected. Keep your drafts and notes: they show how you worked.

2. Don't outsource the thinking

On exam day, there's no AI sitting next to you. A simple rule: AI can help you understand, practise and proofread; the reasoning and the writing stay with you. For an assignment, set the frame from the start:

"I have an assignment due on [the topic]. Don't write it for me. Help me understand the instructions, ask me questions to find my own ideas, then read my draft and tell me what's wrong, without rewriting it."

Also beware of the illusion of understanding: a clear explanation makes you feel you've understood. The test is simple: close the conversation and redo the exercise on your own. If you can't, you haven't learned it yet, and that's fine: now you know what to work on.

3. AI gets things wrong, confidently

It can make up a date, a quote or a source, or make a calculation error, and state it with the same confidence as a fact. When you're learning, that's a trap: you don't yet have the knowledge to spot the mistake.

• Check important facts in your notes, your textbook or a reliable source.
• For a calculation, redo it yourself or ask it to show every step, to see where it goes wrong.
• If it contradicts your notes, your notes (or your teacher) win, until proven otherwise.

4. For parents

• Check the minimum age set in each service's terms of use: it varies from one tool to another, and some require a parent's consent.
• Sit next to your child the first few times: look together at how they ask questions and what they do with the answers.
• Favour uses that make them think: a "study" mode where there is one, guided questions, quizzes. Not ready-made answers.
• Ask them to explain what they learned: if they can say it again in their own words, the AI did its job.
• Talk about their school's rules rather than banning everything: they'll come across AI anyway, so they might as well learn to use it well.
• Protect their data: no full name, address, photo or personal information in the conversation.