Provost Schnell resigns after findings on AI use — Ars Technica
In the United States, Dartmouth College Provost Santiago Schnell resigned after an advisory committee found that he had failed to disclose significant use of artificial intelligence in a scientific article and a column for The Washington Post. Publishers required such use to be disclosed, Ars Technica reports.
Review of AI use
The committee noted Schnell's insufficient cooperation during the review. He provided his Dartmouth College work laptop but did not provide logs from personal large language model accounts connected to the texts under review. Schnell also declined to meet with the committee.
At the same time, the committee gained access to the corporate Claude account that Schnell used through the college. The logs indicate that he used the model to edit scientific papers, find and correct errors in code, and edit or create illustrations. In particular, he asked Claude to assess a manuscript as a subject-matter reviewer and, in another case, to make corrections to TeX files and a repository.
Schnell's explanation
Schnell had previously stated that he used chatbots as an editorial tool and a conversational partner for discussing ideas — to clarify arguments, check grammar, and improve the clarity of wording. According to him, he did not realize that such AI-assisted editing had to be disclosed to an academic journal.
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At the same time, the committee said that Schnell's public explanations may have understated the nature of his actual use of AI. Claude logs also show that he uploaded a manuscript of a future article and asked the model to determine whether the text contained signs of being written by AI. He later submitted a revised version that incorporated changes proposed by the model.
In a September paper on AI-text detection tools, Schnell described in detail his own interaction with GPT-5.6 Pro, GPT-5.6 Sol, and Claude Fable 5.1. He noted that the models helped with early drafts, literature searches, editing, and critical review of the manuscript, but that he himself made the final decisions on content, sources, structure, and wording.
Dartmouth College President Sian Leah Beilock, announcing Schnell's resignation, emphasized the importance of transparency and human judgment that leaders must demonstrate to students and scholars.
