A PhD dissertation in education written by artificial intelligence?

Lopes, Carlos; Forgas, Rubén Comas; Cerdà-Navarr, Antoni

doi:10.1590/S1413-24782024290066

Carlos Lopes

CARLOS LOPES has a doctorate in Sociology from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). He is a professor at the Universidade de Brasília (UnB). He is also a member of the Iberoamerican Network of Research in Academic Integrity (Red-IA).

Conceptualization

Methodology

Investigation

Formal Analysis

Writing – original draft

Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil. Email: carloslopes@unb.br

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2745-3942

Rubén Comas Forgas

RUBÉN COMAS FORGAS has a doctorate in Education Sciences from the Universidad de las Islas Baleares (Spain). He is a professor at the same institution and University of Stockholm (Sweden). He is the Coordinator of the Iberoamerican Network of Research in Academic Integrity (Red-IA).

Bibliography

Methodology

Writing – review & editing

Universidade das Ilhas Baleares, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Email: rubencomas@uib.es

Universidade de Estocolmo, Sweden. Email: rubencomas@uib.es

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8885-753X

Antoni Cerdà-Navarr

ANTONI CERDÀ-NAVARRO has a doctorate in Education Sciences from the Universidad de las Islas Baleares (Spain). He is a professor at the same institution. He is also a member of the Iberoamerican Network of Research in Academic Integrity (Red-IA).

Bibliography

Methodology

Software

Writing – review & editing

Universidade das Ilhas Baleares, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Email: antoni.cerda@uib.cat

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7970-5198

Conflict of interest: The authors declare they don't have any commercial or associative interest that represents conflict of interests in relation to the manuscript.

		Professional Master's	Academic Master's	PhD	Total
Q.1 Do you know any artificial intelligence tool aimed at the production of written texts? (χ²=1,667a; gl=2; p=0,434)	No	93.2%_a	87.8%_a	84.2%_a	88.6%
	Yes	6.8%_a	12.2%_a	15.8%_a	11.4%
	Total	44	41	38	123
Q.2 How often would you use a virtual tool (Artificial Intelligence) capable of aiding you in creating, organizing and writing an academic text? (χ²=20,239a; gl=8; p=0,009)	Never	11.4%_a	19.5%_a	15.8%_a	15.4%
	Rarely	27.3%a	2.4% _b	23.7%_a	17.9%
	Occasionally	20.5% _a	48.8%_b	44.7%_b	37.4%
	Frequently	31.8%a	22.0%_{a, b}	7.9% _b	21.1%
	Most frequently	9.1%_a	7.3%_a	7.9%_a	8.1%
	Total	44	41	38	123

Category	Subcategory and index number	Total in the category
Types of text	Artisanal text [5] Hybrid text: AI and human [3] Standard text [3] Author's referential text [1]	12
Literature Review	Extension of research sources [1] Bibliography searching [1] Exegesis and interpretation [3] Source reliability [2] Appropriation through studying and writing [4] Impoverished literature by mechanical reproduction [1]	12
Plagiarism	Type of plagiarism [11]	11
Writing	Writing unblocking [1] Handicapped person [1] Person with social, emotional and cognitive maturity [1] Relation with conversational competence [1] Relation with orality, listening and reading [1] Reading habit [1] Social protagonism [1] Creativity loss [2] Functional illiteracy [1]	10
Methods, techniques and research focus	Relation between humans [3] Intellectual framing [1] Experience [1] Interpretation [1] Same method with different perspectives [1] Methodology as construction in space and in relationship [1] Appropriation by writing and thought organization [1]	9
Ethics and Collective Morality	Integrity [3] Accountability [1] Plagiarism punishment [1] Collective construction [1] Norms and criteria [2]	8
Assessment	Committee [1] AI functionality [1]	2
Effort	Laziness [3]	3
Schooling and Researcher development	Professionalization [2]	2

Text types	Context units: senses^* * We assessed all the co-relations that helped us reach the types of texts and the meaning attributed to them in the content of the interviews, using Bardin's (2011) methodological focus;
Artisanal text	The artisanal text is the one which is conceived and produced, in essence, by a human being, derived from him or her and found in the author himself/herself, in his/her singularity of language and writing. It shows a structure and content belonging to the author's writing identity. In this type of text, AI is not the writer, therefore, it does not remove the human voice from the writing. The AI writer is not present in the writing. It neither mixes with the author in the creation nor with human autonomous thought.
Author's referential text^ we left the "author's referential text" on Chart 1 due to its approximation with both "artisanal" and "hybrid" texts in order to provide a general view of the types of writing, but the three basic types of writing are actually: artisanal, hybrid and standard.	A text of the scientific article type, technically generated by AI from content, structure and style totally derived from the previous and original writing production by the author — also a user of the algorithm — to be reviewed and adjusted by the very same human writer. A text with unclear boundaries between the "artisanal" and "hybrid" text types.
Hybrid text: AI and human	By means of AI use, a writing basis is created for the human author to edit and adjust the text, configuring it to his or her own style, adding other contents, as something of an original creation. The hybrid text does not remove the writer from the context in a production exclusively and automatically written by AI.
Standard text	Text generated by AI and tending to be practically the same in other operations about the same researched topics. This text has neither the incidence of human creation as something original, nor the variety of language and vocabulary belonging to the human writer. AI resorts to the most frequent vocabulary and style found in the data basis to write the standard text type.

	Category/subcategory	Context unit in literal quote
Conditioned Admissibility	Type of text — "hybrid text: AI and human"	"Maybe a software of this sort could give me a basis, from which I could work with, edit and give it my voice, and make the adjustments I find necessary so that the text would really become my own. But I would never hand in a text which was written by an artificial intelligence." [added emphasis] (Vega, 32, Education, Mp).
	Writing — unblocking writing	"We deal with total writer's block, sometimes, we get stuck for the longest time, because we just can't move on, we cannot make one sentence flow." [added emphasis] (Vega, 32, Education, Mp).
	Ethic and collective morality — plagiarism punishment	"With due attention and plagiarism punishment, I think, with time, this tool may become something positive." [added emphasis] (Vega, 32, Education, Mp).

	Category/subcategory	Context unit in literal quote
Conditioned Admissibility	Type of text — "hybrid text: AI and human"	"It would still need to resort to human adjustments, you know? But I believe that a really good text can be created, because the technology is evolving very fast. … just like what I have told you, if you use the algorithm and make the human adjustments, and if you corroborate that with something else that was found in research." [added emphasis] (Rana, 51, Education, Mp).
	Literature review — Bibliographic search	"It may help with bibliographic search and to obtain data." [added emphasis] (Rana, 51, Education, Mp).
	Ethics and Collective Morality — norms and criteria	"If there is any sort of authorization in this type of situation, this can benefit the research, but it must be very well regulated." [added emphasis] (Rana, 51, Education, Mp).

Category and index	Numeric positioning and index in subcategories
Category and index	Admissibility with reservations	Non-admissibility
Literature Review [12]	02: Bibliographic search [1] Expansion of research sources [1]	10: Exegesis and interpretation [3] Source reliability [2] Appropriation through studying and writing [4] Impoverished literature through mechanic reproduction [1]
Plagiarism [11]	00	11: Type of plagiarism
Writing [10]	03: Writing unblocking [1] Person with disability [1^* * The same graduate student had a favorable position both to "admissibility with reservations" and to "non-admissibility" in the "writing" category, the case being reported in this paper. ] Person with cognitive, social and emotional maturity [1]	07: Relation with conversional competence [1] Relation with orality, listening and reading [1] Reding habit [1] Loss of social protagonism [1] Creativity loss [2] Functional Illiteracy [1]
Research methods, techniques and approaches [09]	00	09: Relation between humans [3] Intellectual framing [1] Experience [1] Interpretation [1] Same method with different perspectives [1] Methodology as construction in space and in the relation [1] Appropriation through writing and thought organization [1]
Ethic and collective morality [08]	06 Integrity [2] Collective construction [1] Norms and criteria [2] Plagiarism punishment [1]	02: Ethics absence [1] Accountability [1]
Assessment	01: AI functionality	01: Examining Committee
Effort	00	03: Laziness
Researcher's schooling and development	00	02: Professionalization

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A PhD dissertation in education written by artificial intelligence?

ABSTRACT