Academic Honesty

What About AI?

The most significant change to this document for 2023-24 is the addition of guidelines governing the use of AI to solve problems.

  • PERMITTED AS REASONABLE - Using CS50’s own AI-based software (including cs50.ai, ddb, et al.).
  • PROHIBITED AS UNREASONABLE - Using third-party AI-based software (including ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, the new Bing, et al.) for any portion of your work in this course.

There are a few additional changes to our policy as of 2023. Please be sure to review this policy carefully.

Policy

This course’s philosophy on academic honesty is best stated as “be reasonable.” The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can facilitate mastery of the course’s material. However, there remains a line between enlisting the help of another and submitting the work of another. This policy characterizes both sides of that line.

The essence of all work that you submit to this course must be your own. Collaboration on problems is not permitted (unless explicitly stated otherwise) except to the extent that you may ask classmates and others for help so long as that help does not reduce to another doing your work for you. Generally speaking, when asking for help, you may show your code or writing to others, but you may not view theirs, so long as you and they respect this policy’s other constraints.

Collaboration on the course’s quizzes is not permitted at all. Collaboration on the AP Create Performance Task is permitted to the extent prescribed by its specifications provided by The College Board.

Below are examples that inexhaustibly characterize acts that the course considers reasonable and not reasonable. If in doubt as to whether some act is reasonable, do not commit it until you solicit and receive approval in writing from Mr. Soistmann. If Mr. Soistmann suspects you’ve turned in work that is not your own, he will have a conversation with you and with the Dean of Students. The Dean of Students will decide when cases will be referred to the honor board as prescribed by the student handbook.

Reasonable

  • Using CS50’s own AI-based software (including cs50.ai, ddb, et al.).
  • Communicating with classmates about problems in English (or some other spoken language), and properly citing those discussions.
  • Discussing the course’s material with others in order to understand it better.
  • Helping a classmate identify a bug in his or her code, such as by viewing, compiling, or running thier code after you have submitted that portion of the problem yourself.
  • Incorporating a few lines of code that you find online or elsewhere into your own code, provided that those lines of code are not themselves solutions to assigned problems and that you cite the lines’ origins (as via comments in your code).
  • Reviewing past years’ quizzes, tests, and solutions thereto.
  • Showing code that you’ve written to someone, possibly a classmate, so that he or she might help you identify and fix a bug.
  • Submitting the same or similar work to this course that you have submitted previously to this course.
  • Turning to the web or elsewhere for instruction beyond the course’s own, for references, and for solutions to technical difficulties, but not for outright solutions to problems or your own AP Create Task.
  • Whiteboarding solutions to problems with others using diagrams or pseudocode but not actual code.
  • Working with (and even paying) a tutor to help you with the course, provided the tutor does not do your work for you.

Not Reasonable

  • Using third-party AI-based software (including ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, the new Bing, et al.) for any portion of your work in this course.
  • Accessing a solution to some problem, quiz, or test prior to (re-)submitting your own.
  • Accessing or attempting to access, without permission, an account not your own.
  • Asking a classmate to see his or her solution to a problem, quiz, or test before (re-)submitting your own.
  • Decompiling, deobfuscating, or disassembling the sample solutions to problems.
  • Failing to cite (as with comments) the origins of code, writing, or techniques that you discover outside of the course’s own lessons and integrate into your own work, even while respecting this policy’s other constraints.
  • Giving or showing to a classmate a solution to a problem, quiz, or test when it is he or she, and not you, who is struggling to solve it.
  • Manipulating or attempting to manipulate scores aritficially, as by exploiting bugs or formulas in the course’s software or by “hard-coding” solutions to specific tests or checks.
  • Looking at another individual’s work during a quiz or test.
  • Paying or offering to pay an individual for work that you may submit as (part of) your own.
  • Providing or making available solutions to problems, quizzes, or tests to anyone.
  • Searching for, soliciting, or viewing a quiz’s questions or answers prior to taking the quiz.
  • Searching for or soliciting outright solutions to problems online or elsewhere.
  • Splitting a problem’s workload with another individual and combining your work (unless explicitly authorized by the problem itself).
  • Submitting (after possibly modifying) the work of another individual.
  • Submitting the same or similar work to this course that you have submitted or will submit to another.
  • Using resources during a quiz or test beyond those explicitly allowed in the quiz’s or test’s instructions.
  • Viewing another’s solution to a problem and basing your own solution on it.