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Anyone who uses artificial intelligence for the Abitur exams is considered a cheater (symbolic image)

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Roland Weihrauch/ dpa

There was probably not much left to deny: A few weeks ago, a student in Hamburg had used a smartphone during the Abitur exam, on which the exam supervisor discovered an open program such as ChatGPT. Obviously, the high school graduate wanted to use formulation aids from artificial intelligence. After he was discovered, the student admitted to the attempt at deception.

The Hamburg school authority also reported other suspected cases, in which the alleged cheaters were not caught red-handed. When correcting exams, teachers had noticed passages of text with unusual formulations. In other cases, parts of the exam were deficient, while others were error-free.

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The schools then used software that checks the probability of a text being created by artificial intelligence. Result: There was probably cheating – but the legal department of the school board cannot prove this with certainty, so the affected students could get away without consequences.

State ministries wave it off: No suspected cases

Is Hamburg an isolated case? In the vast majority of other federal states, there were no cheating attempts with artificial intelligence in this year's Abitur exams; at least no such suspected cases have become known. This was the result of a SPIEGEL survey of the 16 ministries of culture.

There was no response from three federal states, otherwise twelve states said in unison that no incidents had been reported in which students had used the ChatGPT software, for example. With this AI program, users can produce computer-generated texts on any issue.

"But," says the Lower Saxony Ministry of Culture, "of course, this does not rule out the possibility that there may be undetected cheating attempts in individual cases." It is therefore quite possible that students worked so inconspicuously with AI that it was simply not noticed.

And: There was certainly cheating. "We were able to observe the illegal use of smartphones sporadically this year as well," says a statement from Hesse. But this is not a new observation, says Hamburg's school senator Ties Rabe. "In the past, notes were written, then people sometimes looked up Wikipedia or Google with their cell phones on the toilet – and now they obviously cheat like that from time to time," said the SPD politician in an interview with NDR. A safe exam depends on good checks in advance: "We have to make sure that the cell phones are not needed – then the Abitur is cheating-proof."

Use of AI can lead to a six

One could also come up with the idea of actively using programs like ChatGPT in school exams. But this is apparently not planned in any federal state so far. Thuringia writes that forms of examination with the involvement or use of artificial intelligence are "currently not planned".

"If such tools were used, it would be analogous to other attempts at deception," says Rhineland-Palatinate. In severe cases, the examination board could determine the grade "unsatisfactory" or order exclusion from the examination.

Saxony also emphasizes: "If someone were caught with their smartphone switched on, it would also be a case of deception for us – whether AI/ChatGPT, Google, calculators, YouTube or the classic cheat sheet." Saarland says that the rules are "very clear" and would also apply to the use of AI: "The use of external aids is not permitted and leads to exclusion from the exams."

No new exam formats so far

According to the information, the ministries do not yet consider it necessary to fundamentally rethink examination formats in view of the new technologies. Lower Saxony, for example, explains that so far there are no concrete plans to change forms of examination or performance queries. Rather, teachers could use various strategies to prevent cheating and deception attempts with ChatGPT.

"To give just one example," says a spokeswoman from Lower Saxony, "tasks can be varied and individualized. This makes it difficult for students to use canned responses from AI-powered models." In addition, examinations usually contain a variety of task formats, the processing of which also requires reflective thinking, knowledge transfer and creative solution strategies.

In many ministries of education, however, the use of AI is a topic that is very much on the agenda. For example, some federal states, including Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, have developed guidelines for teachers or are working on how to deal with ChatGPT in schools. "It also contains information in the event that students use AI, but do not specify this," says the ministry in Düsseldorf.

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