AI Spurs Battles Over Authenticity in Classrooms and Space in West Virginia

Summary

WSJ Tech News Briefing: AI Spurs Battles Over Authenticity in Classrooms and Space in West Virginia
Released on May 20, 2025

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Introduction

In the latest episode of WSJ Tech News Briefing, hosted by Victoria Craig of The Wall Street Journal, the spotlight is on the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in two distinct arenas: education and community development. The episode delves into the contentious debates surrounding AI's impact on academic integrity and local communities' resistance to large-scale AI data center projects.

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AI in Education: Authenticity Battles in Classrooms

Homework Showdown: Teachers vs. Students

The episode opens with a discussion on the escalating battle over academic authenticity in the age of AI. Julie Jargan, the WSJ family and tech columnist, provides an in-depth analysis of how both educators and students are navigating the challenges posed by AI-generated content in academic settings.

AI Detection Tools and Their Limitations

Teachers have increasingly relied on AI detection software to identify potential instances of cheating. However, these tools are not infallible. Julie Jargan explains, “[02:19] Teachers have become so accustomed to running student essays through AI detectors, which oftentimes provide false positives.” This has led to unintended consequences where honest students find themselves under suspicion despite their efforts to maintain academic integrity.

Student Countermeasures: Proof of Non-AI Use

In response to the prevalence of AI detection, students have developed strategies to counteract false accusations. As Julie Jargan notes, “[02:19] Students are using AI detectors to verify their work before submission, ensuring that their essays are not mistakenly flagged as AI-generated. They meticulously rewrite sections that are flagged until their work predominantly appears human-crafted.”

Common Flags Triggered by AI Detectors

Victoria Craig probes further into the specifics of what AI detectors flag, citing excessive use of certain punctuation and language patterns. Julie Jargan elaborates, “[03:16] AI detectors often flag writing that contains a lot of adjectives, long sentences, or phrases that sound robotic, such as ‘valuable insight’ or ‘crucial role.’” These markers can inadvertently penalize students who possess a sophisticated writing style.

Divergent AI Detection Standards

A significant challenge arises from the variability in AI detection tools. Julie Jargan points out, “[03:44] Different platforms have varying criteria for what constitutes AI-generated content, leading to inconsistent results. A student's essay might pass one detector but fail another, depending on the software used by their teacher.”

Educators' Adaptive Strategies

In light of these challenges, educators are adapting by incorporating more in-class and alternative forms of assessment. Julie Jargan shares, “[04:06] Teachers are increasingly designing assignments that minimize the use of AI, such as handwritten work, oral presentations, and in-class writing tasks. Some are also employing creative grading methods that focus less on text analysis and more on understanding students' thought processes.”

Notable Quote:

“Teachers have become so accustomed to running student essays through AI detectors, which oftentimes provide false positives.”
— Julie Jargan [02:19]

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AI Data Center Controversy in West Virginia

Community Resistance to AI Infrastructure

Shifting focus, the episode explores the resistance from residents in West Virginia against the proposed establishment of one of the world's largest AI data centers by Fundamental Data. Reporter Chris Maher provides a comprehensive overview of the situation in the towns of Davis and Thomas.

Environmental and Lifestyle Impacts

Residents express concerns about the potential environmental degradation and disruption of their pristine, rural lifestyle. Chris Maher explains, “[06:25] The area is valued for its natural beauty, including Blackwater Falls State Park. The community relies heavily on tourism, and there is apprehension that a large data center would spoil the wilderness and disrupt the local economy.”

Scale and Secrecy of the Project

The proposed data center's scale remains somewhat opaque, but indications suggest a massive footprint. Chris Maher states, “[06:46] Fundamental Data’s Ridgeline facility could span up to 10,000 acres, making it one of the largest data center campuses globally. This is particularly striking given the area's limited existing development and 70% coverage by state and national forests.”

Community Mobilization and Activism

Residents have proactively engaged in thorough research and activism to oppose the data center. Chris Maher details, “[08:05] The community has united, utilizing freedom of information requests, installing air monitors, and forming organizations like Tucker United to organize meetings and committees. Their collective efforts aim to scrutinize the project's environmental and social implications.”

Legislative Challenges and Regulatory Environment

A newly enacted law in West Virginia significantly hampers local authority over such developments. Chris Maher notes, “[09:28] The recent legislation restricts local officials’ input on where microgrids and data centers can be located. Furthermore, it dictates that 70% of the tax revenue from such projects goes to state programs, leaving only 30% to the host county. This arrangement has sparked outrage among mayors and county commissioners who feel that the financial benefits do not justify the environmental and lifestyle costs.”

Company’s Stance and Community Relations

Fundamental Data maintains that it is committed to minimizing environmental impact. Chris Maher reports, “[10:19] The company asserts that it has chosen the location near an existing landfill to mitigate environmental disruption and intends to use natural buffers like hills and forests to reduce noise and light pollution.”

Notable Quotes:

“People come here to enjoy the wilderness, dark skies, wildflowers, hiking, skiing. Blackwater Falls State Park is very close by.”
— Chris Maher [06:25]

“We don't have a huge tax base, so we would welcome some development and some job creation. But the rural, mountain community lifestyle is something we don't want to have spoiled.”
— Chris Maher [06:53]

“Some teachers are moving towards more in-class writing assignments, handwritten assignments, oral presentations, other things that don't include the use of a computer where AI could be used.”
— Julie Jargan [04:35]

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AI in Healthcare: A Brief Insight

Interspersed within the episode is a segment featuring Nader Mehrabi, Chief Digital and Information Officer at NYU Langone Health, discussing the integration of AI into the healthcare system. He emphasizes the institution's long-term commitment to AI, stating, “[05:09] We started back in 2017 to deepen our knowledge about AI, and when generative AI surged, we were already prepared to leverage its capabilities.”

Mehrabi outlines the criteria for AI projects in healthcare:

• Improving quality of care
• Enhancing safety in care delivery
• Increasing efficiency
• Elevating patient experience
  He underscores the necessity of aligning AI initiatives with these core objectives to ensure meaningful and impactful implementations.

Notable Quote:

“Every AI project should ask, does it meet one or more of these criteria: improve quality care, make care delivery safer, make it more efficient, or improve the patient experience.”
— Nader Mehrabi [11:22]

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Conclusion

The episode of WSJ Tech News Briefing presents a nuanced exploration of AI's multifaceted impact on society. From the intricate dynamics of academic integrity in educational institutions to the profound implications of AI infrastructure on rural communities, the discussion underscores the need for thoughtful integration of technology. Additionally, the brief yet insightful segment on AI in healthcare highlights the transformative potential of AI when strategically aligned with core institutional goals.

Listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the current AI landscape, informed by expert analyses and real-world case studies, making the episode an essential listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and society.

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Transcript

[Nader Mehrabi]

AI has the potential to transform the medical industry as we know it. Join NYU Langone Health at the break to hear from Nader Mehrabi, the organization's chief digital and information officer, about how the healthcare system is using this powerful technology to improve care.

[Victoria Craig]

Hey T and B listeners, before we get started, heads up. We're going to be asking you a question at the top of each show for the next few weeks. Our goal here at Tech News Briefing is to keep you updated with the latest headlines and trends on all things tech. Now we want to know more about you, what you like about the show, and what more you'd like to hear from us. So our question this week is what are some ways you'd like to hear us tell stories on the show? Casual chats, Listener Q&As? What about special series or deep dives? If you're listening on Spotify, look for our poll under the episode description or you can send us an email to tnbsj.com now onto the show. Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Tuesday, May 20th. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal. Battles over authenticity and resources are brewing in this new age of AI. Today, we're ringside for a homework showdown. Our family and tech columnist tells us how teachers use AI detection to spot cheating while students are trying to leverage it to prove their innocence. Then to West Virginia, where small town residents are fighting to keep one of the world's biggest AI data centers from being built on their doorstep. But first, when I was a student, being accused of cheating on homework would have been classified as a school aged nightmare. To avoid such a catastrophe, I always gave myself plenty of time to complete my assignments and I often whittled away weekends wordsmithing the perfect essays to turn in right on deadline. But in the age of AI, time management just isn't the problem. Those carefully crafted paragraphs are being run through software designed to catch cheaters and increasingly used to vindicate others. WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargan is here to explain. Julie, we've often heard on this show how students are using AI to write their essays for them. But now you're reporting that students are using AI to prove they haven't used AI to cheat. What is going on?

[Julie Jargan]

Yeah, this is an interesting twist in the whole ongoing AI in schools saga. Teachers have become so accustomed to running student essays through AI detectors, which oftentimes provide false positives. So students have caught on and decided that as a preemptive measure, they will run their own original writing through AI detectors to see if it flags any sentences or passages as looking like it could have been AI generated. And then the students will go and rewrite those sections and run them through AI detectors until they come up showing mostly human. And they're doing this to avoid being accused of using AI.

[Victoria Craig]

I want to talk about some of the things that AI flags because it flags excessive use of EM dashes, which are those long punctuation marks that act in the same way parentheses do. They're one of yours and one of my favorite uses of punctuation. But what else does it flag as not being written by a human?

[Julie Jargan]

So oftentimes writing that contains a lot of adjectives or long sentences or just kind of unus words that might sound a little bit robotic or a little bit unlike maybe how students or most people would typically speak can get flagged. So different phrases like valuable insight and crucial role have been frequent phrases that AI detectors will say that sounds like an AI wrote that.

[Victoria Craig]

The problem is that all of these tools differ in what they consider to be plagiarized and not plagiarized depending on what platform you're using. So a student could run it through one and be fine, but the teacher could run it through another one and it could have all kinds of flags. So is there anything that students or even teachers can do to lessen this extra layer that they've collectively maybe put on themselves?

[Julie Jargan]

Some teachers I talk to and professors, they're moving towards more in class writing assignments, handwritten assignments, oral presentations, other things that don't include the use of a computer where AI could be used or doing things in the classroom where maybe AI chatbots are blocked. So they're trying to kind of get around it by coming up with more creative ways to analyze and grade class assignments so that AI is not even part of the picture.

[Victoria Craig]

That was WSJ columnist Julie Jargan. Coming up, residents in West Virginia have done their homework on a new data center slated to come to town, and they're not sitting idly by that story after the break.

[Nader Mehrabi]

Although AI has only recently emerged as a transformational technology, NYU Langone has been laying the foundation for its application for years. Chief Digital and Information Officer Nader Murabi explains.

We've always been forward looking. We actually started back in 2017. We just wanted to learn and create deeper knowledge about AI. And of course we fast forward when generative AI burst in the market. We are much more prepared to take advantage of our patient.

[Victoria Craig]

The rise of artificial intelligence and the race to harness and grow its computational ability has fueled a need for space, Literally wide open tracks of land where companies can build data centers stacked with the latest and greatest chips to power AI platforms. We've talked on this show about how some rural parts of America are welcoming that kind of development, because when big tech moves in, the companies promise jobs and income for the towns surrounding those new centers. But residents in two neighboring West Virginia towns are pushing back on a plan by a Virginia based company called Fundamental Data. Its Ridgeline facility would be one of the largest data center complexes in the world. In a place where the nearest stoplight is 16 miles away, WSJ reporter Chris Maher visited Davis and Thomas. Chris, why are these residents so opposed to this plan?

[Chris Maher]

So they really rely on tourism. People come there for all sorts of reasons to enjoy the wilderness areas. People come for the dark skies, for the wildflowers, for hiking, skiing. Blackwater Falls State park is very close by. It's mostly a very pristine area. It's been undisturbed. And people have fought development in the past and they're hoping to do it again here.

[Victoria Craig]

And what exactly are they opposed to? Can you just describe the scale of this project from Fundamental Data?

[Chris Maher]

A lot of the details are still confidential. It's still largely a mystery to local residents exactly how big this project could be. But from what they've been able to glean, and actually from what I've gathered from my reporting, this could be one of the biggest data center campuses in the world if it's fully built out, which is striking, especially in an area that doesn't have much development. This is a county that's about 70% state forest, national forest undeveloped. That means they don't have a huge tax base, so they would welcome some development and some job creation. But at the same time, it's got this rural, kind of mountain community lifestyle that they don't want to have spoiled. There is a natural gas pipeline very close by they could tap into. This location is kind of on this line between Columbus, Ohio and Northern Virginia. So two big data center hubs. And also pretty close to Northern Virginia, where I learned in reporting this story that about 70% of the world's Internet traffic passes through. So, like, even if this fight doesn't go through, it seems like this area and the state and the governor's push to get more data centers means that there are going to be more issues like this coming up.

[Victoria Craig]

What I find so interesting about the story is that the residents in both of these places have been very motivated to research what this data center will mean for their Communities. They've been digging through, redacted environmental impact studies. They've even installed air monitors across town. Just tell us about all of these things that they've been doing and the results that they've seen so far.

[Chris Maher]

People who live in these two towns are really motivated. They really came together, coalesced quickly. You've got longtime residents and newcomers, the transplants, all coming together. They don't always agree on issues, but on this one, they do agree. Some of them have engineering backgrounds or environmental activism backgrounds, so they kind of hit the ground running. They filed freedom of information requests. They've been in touch with the state regulators, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, and they've formed a group called Tucker United. It's in Tucker County, West Virginia, and they're holding meetings. They form committees. They're very, very organized.

[Victoria Craig]

So you write in your story that fundamental data could span 10,000 acres across these counties. That sort of gives you a sense of the scale. So its environmental impact, on the one hand for residents, is a concern. But it's also about a new law in Washington, Virginia, that's really set this fight up because it lowered the regulatory environment and put limits on the kind of input that local officials could have. Just describe that for us what sort of push and pull these two things are having.

[Chris Maher]

What made this project possible likely was a law that was just enacted last month in West Virginia, and what it does is it prohibits local officials from having any input in where microgrids are located. So data centers that would be powered by a power plant or another source that's not connected to the grid. Local officials have very little say in zoning or opposing that. So that's upset mayors and commissioners throughout the state. Another thing that's kind of controversial about this law is that it sends about 70% of the tax revenue back to the state for different programs, including one to lower the personal income tax in the state, and about 30% goes to the host county. So there would definitely be revenue to Tucker county, but the cost of that is not worth paying for residents in the area.

[Victoria Craig]

What does the company say about the initial outrage to its plans, which people, as you've said, don't really fully know the entire scope of yet?

[Chris Maher]

My sense is that they were expecting some pushback, but probably not to this extent. And the scale of the kind of initial shock and sort of outrage from the community residents there? The company says that it is careful. It wants to be a steward of the land. It selected this location near a landfill that's already existing. There's it says that the hills and the forest would be buffering some of the noise and the light. They say they're taking careful steps to minimize the impact of the local area.

[Victoria Craig]

That was WSJ reporter Chris Maher. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

[Nader Mehrabi]

For hospitals, determining where to invest AI resources is critical. Here's NYU Langone's Nader Warabi.

Again, the way we use AI here is really grounded. Can we improve the quality care with AI? Can we make care delivery safer? And can we make care delivery efficient? And lastly, can we improve the patient experience using AI? Every project AI should think we should say, does it meet one or more of those criteria?

To learn more about healthcare innovation at NYU Langone health, please visit NYU langone.org Custom content from WSJ is a unit of the Wall Street Journal Advertising Department. The Wall Street Journal news organization was not involved in the creation of this content.