\n
<\/p>\n
Despite the scandal, Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock wants more AI. (She wrote a piece for The Atlantic in September called \u201cWhy I Want More AI at Dartmouth.\u201d) What\u2019s crucial, though, is that the school\u2019s leaders should \u201chold themselves to the highest standards,\u201d she said. This appears to mean one main thing: disclosure.<\/p>\n
In announcing Schnell\u2019s resignation, Beilock wrote that \u201ceach of us brings a different perspective on how and when to incorporate AI into our work and our lives. Moreover, keeping Dartmouth at the forefront of AI inevitably means leading through an environment that is fluid and fast-changing. That is why, as leaders, it is so critical that we model the transparency and human judgment that we expect from our students and scholars.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does \u201cdisclosure\u201d mean? In a September 2026 paper on AI detection tools, called \u201cWho Wrote This?\u201d, Schnell himself goes to great lengths to argue that \u201chuman-written\u201d or \u201cAI-written\u201d is far too simple a binary. In his view, everything will become a mix of human judgment and AI work, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. The key for him is that the human author takes full responsibility for the text, however it was composed and edited.<\/p>\n
In the paper, Schnell lays out his method for producing it. It\u2019s worth quoting at some length:<\/p>\n
In September 2026, I asked OpenAI\u2019s GPT-5.6 Pro whether an AI-written essay could ever be identified with certainty, and I suggested connecting the problem to Turing\u2019s imitation game and to the \u201creverse\u201d Turing test posed by AI-text detection. GPT-5.6 Pro connected the question to binary hypothesis testing and statistical decision theory, proposed early structures and titles, identified candidate literature, and generated portions of early drafts. I chose the problem, journal, audience, and eventual direction of the argument. I decided which examples and results should remain central, including the decision to retain the Liang study while confronting it with important counterevidence. I checked the cited literature, rejected or corrected claims that I judged inaccurate, corrected mathematical and conceptual errors, and reorganized the argument.<\/p>\n
In revising the manuscript, I rewrote most sections and added substantial explanations. I occasionally asked GPT-5.6 Sol to provide language-editing assistance for sections I had rewritten. I created the figures and made the final decisions about the mathematics, interpretation, sources, organization, and wording. I take full responsibility for the resulting manuscript.<\/p>\n
Before submitting the manuscript for publication, I also asked GPT-5.6 Pro and Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 to review it critically and identify issues that reviewers might raise. I evaluated the issues they identified and made corrections where I judged them warranted.<\/p>\n
Despite all this assistance, Schnell resists the idea that AI is a \u201cco-author.\u201d Instead, he writes, \u201cCalling [the paper] \u2018coauthored\u2019 would introduce a different confusion. Mathematical tools have long made substantive contributions without thereby becoming authors\u2026 The point is not that the software contributed nothing. It is that contribution and authorship are different roles.\u201d<\/p>\n