USU Research Offers Ethical Guideposts for the AI Era

Higher education is navigating a period of heightened scrutiny and rapid change. In recent years, colleges and universities have faced public debate over their values, governance, and societal role– debates that have, in some cases, influenced donor confidence and policy decisions.

And now a second wave of concern is breaking against the eroding shoreline of public trust: generative AI that can fabricate convincing falsehoods, plagiarize undetectably, and blur the line between authentic scholarship and synthetic fabrication of text and data.

When students and faculty can generate entire research papers with a few keystrokes and AI "hallucinations" present fiction as fact, how can universities maintain their fundamental mission as seekers and guardians of truth? As a result, the credibility crisis facing higher education has never been more urgent.

Three recent research studies by Jared M. Hansen and his coauthors confronts these challenges head-on, offering much-needed ethical guideposts for research and teaching in an era when both philosophical relativism and technological deception threaten the integrity of higher education. Hansen is an associate professor of marketing at Utah State University and current associate editor for business ethics and CSR research at the Journal of Business Research.

In their just released research "Pandora's Box Reopened: Can Generative AI Restore Hope or Result in a Decline in the Quest for Academic Integrity," Hansen and his coauthors examine whether AI tools represent the final blow to academic honesty or an unexpected opportunity to recommit to scholarly standards.

Within the last few years fraud in research across fields of science and social science has greatly increased--with tens of thousands of research retractions. In the research, they provide practical frameworks for educators and researchers navigating the tension between embracing technological innovation and preserving academic integrity.

Their recent study "Understanding the Role and Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence Hallucination Within Consumers' Tourism Decision-Making Processes" reveals that many consumers globally now trust GenAI more than they trust government websites, social media influencers, or tourism peer review sites such as Tripadvisor. The results of their large-scale experiment reported in the study show that many consumers globally chose error-filled AI tourism itineraries over correct itineraries from government tourism websites, TripAdvisor, or social media influencers.

When asked why—the number one answer was that they trust Generative AI more than the other sources to be truthful. As more people shift to using GenAI over web searches to find information, this raises big concerns given that GenAI errors, called hallucinations, continue to happen.

Hansen outlines solutions to the concern that universities have lost their moral compasses in the article "The Philosophical Foundations of Ethical Decision-Making: Past Controversies, Current Misunderstandings, and Future Opportunities." This research directly addresses the longstanding misunderstandings over truth and relativism that have fueled skepticism toward higher education, while providing a foundation for ethical research and teaching in the age of AI.

The research identifies and clarifies seven common misunderstandings about why relativism remains popular despite its philosophical incoherence, including the “my truth” trend and differentiating between research methods and philosophical terms that sound similar but mean very different things. The research outlines how one can embrace the concept that "something is relative to something else" in science without embracing the problematic "non-evaluation thesis" of relativism that leads to nihilism.

As higher education faces simultaneous threats from both philosophical and technological sources, Hansen's research provides essential guiderails for institutions and educators committed to maintaining their credibility as centers of truth-seeking and ethical scholarship.