"AI Detection Tools Falsely Accuse International Students of Cheating", 14 August 2023

...Over the course of the spring semester, [Taylor Hahn, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University,] noticed a pattern of these false positives. Turnitin’s tool was much more likely to flag international students’ writing as AI-generated. As Hahn started to see this trend, a group of Stanford computer scientists designed an experiment to better understand the reliability of AI detectors on writing by non-native English speakers. They published a paper last month, finding a clear bias. While they didn’t run their experiment with Turnitin, they found that seven other AI detectors flagged writing by non-native speakers as AI-generated 61 percent of the time. On about 20 percent of papers, that incorrect assessment was unanimous. Meanwhile, the detectors almost never made such mistakes when assessing the writing of native English speakers.

AI detectors tend to be programmed to flag writing as AI-generated when the word choice is predictable and the sentences are more simple. As it turns out, writing by non-native English speakers often fits this pattern, and therein lies the problem...

..."The design of many GPT detectors inherently discriminates against non-native authors, particularly those exhibiting restricted linguistic diversity and word choice,” [Weixin] Liang, one of the authors of the Stanford study, said via email...

...Some international students see additional risks. Colleges and universities routinely advise their international students that charges of academic misconduct can lead to a suspension or expulsion that would undermine their visa status. The threat of deportation can feel like a legitimate fear...In Liang’s paper, his team pointed out that false accusations of cheating can be detrimental to a student’s academic career and psychological well-being. The accusations force students to prove their own innocence...

...Annie Chechitelli, chief product officer for Turnitin, said the company’s tool was trained on writing by English speakers in the U.S. and abroad as well as multilingual students, so shouldn’t have the bias Liang’s paper identified. The company is conducting its own research into whether the tool is less accurate when assessing the writing of non-native English speakers...