My slides for this talk can be downloaded here.

This talk is about recognising if a student research paper was AI-generated. I share tips on what to watch out for when reading student papers and what counts as strong evidence that generative AI was in use. I also share what I have learned about how generative AI works, and I discuss educational assessment in the AI era.

References

Chan, C. K. Y., & Colloton, T. (2024). Generative AI in higher education: The ChatGPT effect. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003459026

Fiedler, A., & Döpke, J. (2025). Do humans identify AI-generated text better than machines? Evidence based on excerpts from German theses. International Review of Economics Education, 49, 100321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iree.2025.100321

Fleckenstein, J., Meyer, J., Jansen, T., Keller, S. D., Köller, O., & Möller, J. (2024). Do teachers spot AI? Evaluating the detectability of AI-generated texts among student essays. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 6, 100209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100209

Giray, L. (2024). The Problem with False Positives: AI Detection Unfairly Accuses Scholars of AI Plagiarism. The Serials Librarian, 85(5–6), 181–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2433256

Gosling, S. D., Ybarra, K., & Angulo, S. K. (2024). A widely used Generative-AI detector yields zero false positives. Aloma: Revista de Psicologia, Ciències de l’Educació i de l’Esport, 42(2), 31-43. https://doi.org/10.51698/aloma.2024.42.2.31-43

Hyatt, J. P. K., Bienenstock, E. J., Firetto, C. M., Woods, E. R., & Comus, R. C. (2025). Using aggregated AI detector outcomes to eliminate false positives in STEM-student writing. Advances in Physiology Education, 49(2), 486-495. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00235.2024

Mukherjee, S. (2023, June 15). Unveiling Perplexity: Measuring Success of LLMs and Generative AI Models. Medium. https://ramblersm.medium.com/the-significance-of-perplexity-in-evaluating-llms-and-generative-ai-62e290e791bc

Tian, E. (2023, March 1). Perplexity, burstiness, and statistical AI detection. GPTZero. https://gptzero.me/news/perplexity-and-burstiness-what-is-it/

Perfas, S. L. (Host). (2026, February 18). Preserving learning in the age of AI shortcuts [Audio podcast episode]. In Harvard Thinking (S1, Ep22). The Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/02/preserving-learning-in-the-age-of-ai-shortcuts/