{"id":199429,"date":"2026-09-14T16:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=199429"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T14:46:13","slug":"ook-minister-van-onderwijs-rianne-letschert-gebruikte-ai-in-toespraak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2026\/09\/14\/ook-minister-van-onderwijs-rianne-letschert-gebruikte-ai-in-toespraak\/","title":{"rendered":"Education minister Rianne Letschert also used AI in speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Traces of generative AI have been found in speeches by education minister Rianne Letschert. It is not only students who use chatbots; politicians do too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Minister<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They found out about ChatGPT in The Hague. De Volkskrant<\/em><\/a> found traces of AI in hundreds of social media posts by prime minister Rob Jetten, the newspaper reported last Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nieuwsuur<\/em> subsequently also found AI<\/a> in speeches by other politicians, including defence minister Dilan Yesilg\u00f6z and junior minister Derk Boswijk. Some of the speeches were said to consist almost entirely of chatbot-generated words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nieuwsuur also spotted sections written with AI in a speech by education minister Rianne Letschert. It did not say which speech. A brief search by the Higher Education Press Agency through six published speeches<\/a> does produce a clear candidate: a speech given in May in the aula of TU Delft, in which the minister discusses the dilemmas between freedom and security in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the AI detection tool Pangram, 15 per cent of this speech<\/a> does indeed consist of AI-generated text. In response to questions, the Ministry of Education acknowledged that it does sometimes use artificial intelligence. This is permitted under certain conditions, a spokesperson said, and it ‘offers opportunities to make government communication clearer and more accessible’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For all the minister’s speeches, she determines the message and wording herself”, the response states. “And they are always written by a human.” What exactly ‘writing’ means remains unclear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pangram<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Pangram, a speech by junior minister for education and emancipation Judith Tielen also consists of 24 per cent AI-generated text. Once again, it is an English-language speech<\/a>, about the freedom to be open about one’s sexual orientation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pangram is a relatively new detection programme with large datasets containing both human- and AI-generated texts. This enables it to identify certain patterns that are more commonly used by chatbots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Pangram can recognise texts produced by Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. According to scientists, Pangram takes a cautious approach: less than half of texts written entirely by AI are detected as such. Outsiders cannot verify how the programme works: it uses AI itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leading by example<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As with many a student’s work, it is impossible to say with certainty what is and is not AI-generated. There is only evidence when there are obvious hallucinations or other errors. This is why AI use has been the subject of much debate in education for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minister Letschert said through her spokesperson: “AI is an integral part of society and therefore of education too. It is important for education to move with the times.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this creates dilemmas, Letschert acknowledged. “It is up to educational institutions to organise education accordingly, and they are working on this intensively in all sectors.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital watermark<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Pangram, teachers can now detect AI in students’ work somewhat more easily, but it is not yet enough to establish fraud conclusively, an expert told daily newspaper NRC<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New European rules may make this possible after all. The EU requires all AI content to be digitally marked in future. AI companies have a few more months to roll out a digital ‘watermark’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The makers of the AI chatbot Claude were the first to achieve this<\/a>. From now on, their bot will generate its texts slightly less randomly, according to a specific statistical code. People do not notice this when reading, but an AI tool can use it to distinguish ordinary texts from AI-generated ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t

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Een lijst met artikelen<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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