No guidance here, just a connoisseur of the law of unintended consequences. Maybe your friend might ask his advisor (or department chair?) for guidance on a route to resolve the situation?

This is an asinine way to handle plagiarism. Basically your friend's supervisor doesn't understand plagiarism at all. I wonder what else they don't understand. Sounds like a worthless degree to me. Hard to hear after putting this much effort in already, but this only happens when working with a complete idiot.

Make an account on TurnItIn - the uni must have access for the supervisor to have used it. Or get the supervisor to "download" the turnitin comments and highlights - all possible as I have used it myself.

Is this a large school with a national (or international) student body, or a small place with only local students?

Does the thesis quote extensively from other work with citation? Does it paraphrase other work with citation? Does it use a lot of government data and analysis or newspaper stories?

See: washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/14/… See: vanderbilt.edu/brightspace/2023/08/16/…

@BryanKrause. That's quite a jump you made between this situation and a "worthless degree"

@ScottSeidman If the school's director is this clueless and is also the student's direct supervisor I cannot have any confidence in this program.

To those saying "must be a bad programme" : there are plenty of otherwise excellent educators who are ignorant about GenAI, or at least not sufficiently confident in their knowledge to disbelieve Turnitin's marketing.

@SolarMike I don't think markers having access to TII automatically means that students do. I think this is a choice by the institution. However, I agree that it may be available and thus would be worth checking.

Is it possible for your friend to find an ally among the faculty ranks (such as one of their former instructors) who (i) understands that "AI detection" services are nowhere near the level where they can reliably tell human-generated from AI-generated text, and who (ii) is willing to talk to the supervisor about this?

Which country is this? If it is in Western Europe or USA, you could probably challenge the decision of the supervisor in court, if he/she actually fails the student based on rubbish AI detection.

My advisor didn't read my thesis, but rolled a 12 sided die and only got a 5. They said that if the roll on the next version wasn't at least a 9 I would fail and be expelled. Perfectly understandable, fair, and just. Yes?

FWIW, if you answer questions here about your post, you get better answers. I can't answer without knowing the size, and amount of specialization of this school. I've known (small, highly specialized) places where this can happen and there be no recourse whatever.

These days you need to run your original work through a "humanizing" AI as a precaution so it won't get flagged as AI-generated. ;-)

Now I'm really curious how Turnitin would grade the supervisor's publications if someone used it to check them...

AI learns from articles written by humans. Consequently, AI writes like humans. Now they say humans write like AI. Oh how the tables have turned.

@infinitezero this is just an impression so far, but it certainly seems like students who aren't native English speakers are being discriminated against by these checks. Having learnt from the same sources as the AI, of course there will be similarities in how they write.

@Flyto An educator is not excellent just because they refuse to stay with the times. There is no “otherwise”. Either you remain current or you become unfit for the job. You may be fit for another job, say that of a tutor. But being in the classroom means you have to understand the world your students live in. Nobody asks the “otherwise excellent” educators to write scientific papers about AI. They do need to get a feel for how AI is used for plagiarism, and what the limitations of the technology are.

@Kubahasn'tforgottenMonica that's certainly an opinion that you are welcome to hold - although I would draw a distinction between "refusing to stay with the times" vs "does not have the time to keep up to date with rapidly changing technology on top of their other duties". But given the observable reality that not everybody in every classroom is an expert on AI detection technologies, do you think it is correct to dismiss it as a bad programme and/or a bad school on this basis?

@BryanKrause -- so, no need to temporize given that you've heard one side of a story from somebody who actually hasn't seen the turnitin report? No possibility that the 20% the Business student told their friend about wasn't a critical part of the manuscript that the advisor recognized as an uncited and unmarked quote? Not a possibility the the Business student hasn't told their friend the whole story? Just "cannot have any confidence in the program" and "working with a complete idiot? Frankly, not the messaging I expect from a diamond moderator.

This reminds me of a similar discussion elsewhere... I think it may have been one of the big Q&A sites out there ;-).

Also, the only answer is "wow, I'm that good?"

Did your friend use a tool like Grammarly to help edit their thesis?

@Flyto I'd still say it's a bad sign for the school when the prof doesn't do any research into AI checking software before they rely on it. Not understanding AI is reasonable. Using a tool you don't understand (and seemingly took no effort to understand) as a critical part of evaluating students would make me question what other things they don't take the time to research, before including them as a part of their program.