President announces resignation
President Sian Leah Beilock announced the resignation of Provost Schnell. Beilock wrote that leaders must "model the transparency and human judgment that we expect from our students and scholars." This announcement follows the September 2026 publication of Schnell’s paper, "Who Wrote This?". In that paper, Schnell provides many details on his use of artificial intelligence to help compose his research. Beilock also stated that school leaders should "hold themselves to the highest standards." This follows her September piece for The Atlantic where she argued for more AI use at Dartmouth. In that article, she wrote that keeping the school at the forefront of AI requires leading through an environment that is fluid and fast-changing. She also noted that each leader brings a different perspective on how to incorporate AI into their work and their lives.
Details of AI usage
Schnell used GPT-5.6 Pro in his September 2026 paper to propose early structures and titles, identify candidate literature, and generate portions of early drafts. He suggested connecting the problem to Turing’s imitation game and to the "reverse" Turing test posed by AI-text detection, which the model connected to binary hypothesis testing and statistical decision theory. Schnell chose the problem, the journal, the audience, and the eventual direction of the argument. He decided which examples and results should remain central, such as the decision to retain the Liang study while confronting it with important counterevidence. After he rewrote most sections and added substantial explanations, he used GPT-5.6 Sol to provide language-editing assistance. He also checked the cited literature, rejected claims he judged inaccurate, corrected mathematical and conceptual errors, and reorganized the argument’s structure. Before submitting the manuscript, he asked GPT-5.6 Pro and Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 to review it critically to identify issues that reviewers might raise. He created the figures and made decisions about the mathematics, interpretation, sources, organization, and wording. He evaluated the various issues the AI identified and made corrections where he judged them warranted for the final version. Schnell rejects the idea that the software is a "co-author" because he believes "contribution and authorship are different roles." He maintains that he takes "full responsibility" for the resulting manuscript.
