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- PaperEdArXiv (OSF Preprints)20 Jul 2026
The Verification Paradox
Greg O'Keefe
The paper identifies a second verification failure in AI-generated academic work: students cannot determine if the material is correct, deep, or safe. It argues that AI-sourced claims lack an accountable party, structurally different from textbook claims, making novice learning problematic. It concludes that oral defense cannot resolve the gap because ownership and validity are independent.
Original abstract
When a student uses generative AI to produce academic work, the capacity to verify that work fails for two parties, for two reasons, at two moments. The teacher, examining the finished artifact, cannot determine who performed the thinking. The student, situated inside the process of production, cannot determine whether the material the system has supplied is correct, deep, or safe to build upon. This paper concerns the second failure. It argues that a student operating outside their own domain of competence faces three distinct verification problems — correctness, depth, and calibration — and that the third is the most consequential, because it is not a failure to check but a failure to recognize that anything requires checking. The paper then argues that this predicament is not reducible to the familiar condition of novice ignorance. AI-sourced claims differ structurally from textbook-sourced claims in a way that is independent of quality: no accountable party stands behind any particular sentence, which removes the external correction mechanism that has historically made novice learning survivable. Following recent work on the testimony gap, the paper shows this difference to be structural rather than incidental, and therefore permanent: it does not resolve as the underlying systems improve. Finally, the paper argues that the most natural institutional response — verifying student understanding through oral defense — cannot close the gap, because ownership and validity are independent variables. A student can genuinely own a false claim. Any instrument that certifies ownership while remaining blind to validity does not merely fail to detect the problem; it launders it, converting an unverified claim into credentialed knowledge.
- PaperAssessment & Evaluation in Higher Education3 Jul 2026
Uncertainty, trust, and the individualisation of risk in contemporary assessment cultures
Kenneth Maxwell, Gregor Maxwell
Generative AI acts as an assessment stress-test, revealing fragilities in pedagogical trust and institutional governance. Survey data from a Norwegian university (2023–2025, n=1,365) show that student uncertainty has intensified, shifting from ethical caution to strategic risk management and perceptions of threat. Inconsistent guidance leads to performative safety and self-imposed micro-ethics, individualizing risk and transforming the digital divide into unequal capacities to absorb assessment risk.
Original abstract
Contemporary assessment cultures are characterised by increasing uncertainty, as established approaches to authorship, judgement, and integrity are placed under strain by emerging conditions such as generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Rather than positioning this technology solely as a disruption to be contained, this article conceptualises GenAI as an assessment stress-test that reveals latent fragilities in pedagogical trust and institutional governance. Drawing on three consecutive years of survey data from a Norwegian university (2023–2025, n = 1,365), the study analyses how students navigate assessment under conditions of sustained uncertainty. Findings indicate that instead of diminishing with familiarity, uncertainty has intensified and shifted from ethical caution to strategic risk management and perceptions of structural threat. In the absence of coherent guidance, students describe a fragmented landscape of inconsistent judgement, leading to adopting performative safety and self-imposed micro-ethics as compensatory boundary work. This individualisation of uncertainty creates uneven equity consequences, transforming the digital divide into a gap between those who possess the cultural resources to absorb assessment risk and those who must withdraw to protect themselves. The article concludes that control-oriented responses exacerbate these tensions, revealing both their limitations and the conditions under which pedagogical trust becomes strained.