Dartmouth Provost Resigns Over Undisclosed AI Use in Academic Work and Op-Ed

Provost Resigns Amidst AI Disclosure Controversy

Santiago Schnell, the Provost of Dartmouth College, resigned from his position after an advisory committee concluded that he did not disclose his use of AI in an academic paper and a Washington Post op-ed. This occurred despite publisher requirements for such disclosures regarding AI assistance in written works.

Investigation and Cooperation Issues

The committee investigating Schnell's AI use noted "insufficient cooperation" from him. While he provided his Dartmouth laptop, he did not provide logs from his personal large language model (LLM) accounts relevant to the writings in question, nor did he agree to meet with the committee.

Nature of AI Use

The committee accessed Schnell's Claude enterprise account through Dartmouth, revealing his use of the LLM for revising papers, identifying and correcting code bugs, and editing or generating figures. For example, Schnell used Claude to request a reviewer's report for a paper he was preparing to submit, asking for feedback on its chemical dynamics and kinetics aspects.

Schnell maintained that his AI use was for editorial assistance and as a discussion partner, stating he used chatbots to "refine a few arguments" and "check for grammatical errors." He also told a journal editor he used AI as an "editorial tool" to "help refine sentences, improve clarity, and the expression of arguments," claiming he did not understand that this type of AI-assisted editing required disclosure.