Dartmouth Provost Santiago Schnell resigns following AI investigation

Santiago Schnell has resigned from his position as provost of Dartmouth College in Hanover following an internal investigation into his use of artificial intelligence. The probe found that Schnell failed to disclose extensive AI usage in his published work, including a Washington Post op-ed where he had warned universities about the challenges of combating AI cheating among students.

An advisory committee at Dartmouth reported that Schnell provided insufficient cooperation during the investigation. While he surrendered his university-issued laptop, he declined to meet with investigators and did not provide logs from his personal AI accounts. However, investigators accessed his Claude enterprise account, which revealed he used the chatbot to revise papers, fix code, and generate figures.

In one instance, Schnell used the AI to act as a specialist peer reviewer for a paper intended for the journal ChemSystemsChem. The investigation also noted that he used the tool to check a manuscript for signatures of AI writing before submitting a revised version based on the chatbot’s suggestions.