GOLDWIN SMITH– Senior Grant Lampert ‘26 is living every student’s worst nightmare. After spending time and energy writing a discussion board post without AI, he has been accused of violating Cornell’s generative AI policy.
English Professor Robin Castillo claimed she was immediately suspicious of Lampert’s post on Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus due to the “unique grammatical choices.”
His opening sentence, “Camus–who wrote The Myth of Sisyphus–argues in his essay–that essay being The Myth of Sisyphus–that one man must imagine Sisyphus happy,” features an alarming amount of em-dashes, a common sign of generative AI usage.
“I like an em dash,” said Lampert. “I think it’s unfair that I’m being accused of using AI for a stylistic choice.”
His grammar wasn’t the only thing that Castillo flagged. His sentence “Here is a summary of key points from the text,” caught Castillo’s eye. “It didn’t help,” she said, “that what followed was thirty-three bullet points all reading ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy.'”
“You can’t expect me to write 300 words,” defended Lampert. “There’s really not that much to say about Camus. Plus, I had to respond to two other people. I can’t use all my good points in one post.”
A key point in Lampert’s defense was the number of spelling errors. He claims it is not possible for generative AI to mess up as much as he did.
Castillo rebutted, accusing Lampert of intentionally misspelling words to avoid suspicion. Things got heated when Lampert responded, “Is it possible I’m just stupid?”
The accusations against Lampert were dropped after a thorough review of his writing going all the way back to his freshman year. Because the issues in this discussion board post were consistent with every other thing he’s ever written, it was decided there was no cause for alarm.
Lampert says he’s “relieved.” He will be graduating magna cum laude this year as an English major.
