CLASS A.I. CLASP : MOST IMPORTANT STUDENTS' ESSAY

WE ARE the first college class of the A.I. era - ChatGPT arrived on campus about two months after we did. After we graduate next month, this technology would have altered our lives in very different ways.

For some, it has opened the door to staggering wealth. But for many who came to Stanford - just four years ago! - when a degree seemed like a guaranteed ticket to a high-paying job, the door has been slammed shut.

For all of us, A.I. has permanently changed how we think and behave.

STANFORD ALREADY HAD a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes [ now serving a 10-year prison sentence ], the Crypto fraudster Do Kwon [ now serving a 15-year-prison sentence ] and the founders of JUUL [ which was forced to pay billions for getting  kids hooked on vapes].

All of those scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life.

NOW A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.

CHEATING has become omnipresent. I don't know a single person who hasn't used A.I. to get through some assignments in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become.

As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the '' nuclear option '' might be called for :  allowing faculty to procter-in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate : '' confidence in the honour '' of students.

In our tech-enabled, newly A.I. powered world, students were increasingly fudging about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the Uber-Eats credit that the school offered to those in quarantine.

SOME KIDS I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. tech advancement.  Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.

In Junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail.

A friend of mine captured the school's ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors.

It was all, I recall her saying, '' just a little bit of fraud.''

! First and Foremost ! - !WOW! thanks The New York Times and Student Theo Baker.

This Master Essay Publishing continues with a regular interval of just two days.