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University Suspends Students for AI Tool It Gave Them $10k Prize to Make

Emory University gave students a $10,000 entrepreneurial prize for their AI startup, then suspended them and accused them of cheating when they built it.

The students were suspended by the school’s Honor Council because their AI tool “could be used for cheating” and because they connected it to a software platform used by the university to host course reading material, homework, and other assignments without obtaining express permission, though this feature was mentioned at the competition it won $10,000 at. A screenshot from an Eightball demoThis whole embarrassing saga, revealed in the lawsuit, is another piece of evidence that demonstrates universities and schools more broadly have absolutely no idea how to deal with AI in an academic context and have a misunderstanding of the technology. One of the witnesses the Honor Council called said that “this application was being marketed through various Reddit posts as a ChatGPT for Canvas,” and then said “From the security perspective, people cannot give full access of their data to someone else.

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