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Miss Aiwanehi Aigbokhaevbo, a Nigerian dietician who was caught using AI (ChatGPT) to provide real-time answers to impress interviewers during a video call interview for a job at an NHS hospital has been struck off the UK register.
The registered dietician kept asking the interview panel to repeat the question, before ‘slowly and deliberately’ repeating the question back herself, in an effort to buy time until she had ‘model’ answers, a tribunal heard.
Nigeria-based Miss Aigbokhaevbo raised suspicions when she was spotted reading off a screen and managing to speak ‘very eloquently’ despite her considerable hesitation before answering, reports the Daily Mail online.
One of the panel members subsequently put the interview questions into ChatGPT and noted significant similarities to the answers she had provided.
It was heard that the use of AI had been a particular problem with candidates from Nigeria applying for jobs.
Three different members of the panel suggested she was cheating both while answering questions in the interview and while completing a subsequent case study question.
Miss Aigbokhaevbo has now been struck off following a hearing at the Heath and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPTS).
The tribunal heard that she undertook the job interview for an oncology dietician role at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in March 2024.
The interview took place over Microsoft Teams because she was in Nigeria at the time.
During the interview she was asked personal questions, which the panel said she answered with ‘great enthusiasm and spontaneity’.
But when she was asked clinical questions, she often hesitated and asked for the question to be repeated.
The tribunal panel said: ‘When asked questions of a clinical nature, Miss Aigbokhaevbo’s response altered noticeably: she became very hesitant, she asked the panel to repeat the questions a number of times and she herself then repeated the questions back very slowly and deliberately.
‘After much hesitation and repetition of the questions, she would then articulate with great fluency a model answer, rather than answering from her own knowledge and experience.
‘The answers she provided were as if from a textbook, indicating specialist knowledge and experience of an advanced level, referring to medical terminology which were beyond the expectations of the job role.’
The panel noted during the interview that her eyes were moving ‘from side to side’, as if she was reading from the screen.
They found that she was repeating the questions being put to her, so that she could input them into an AI and then read them out.
After the interview, Miss Aigbokhaevbo was asked to write a case study in 45 minutes.
The panel said this was also completed by her using AI because the answers were ‘too detailed and perfect’ to be her own work.
The interview panel concluded that she had used AI during the interview.
At the tribunal hearing, Miss Aigbokhaevbo denied using AI during the interview and said that if she had, it would have been a ‘great offence’.
She said that this was her 17th job interview and she had previously applied for around 200 jobs.
Her insistence on repeating the questions back, she said, was a ‘reflex’ to ensure that she had understood the question correctly.
She denied showing any hesitancy in answering questions but said that she needed to digest the question before answering.
Miss Aigbokhaevbo also suggested there were some connectivity issues during the interview and her glances away were to check her wi-fi router next to her laptop.
The hearing concluded that her responses were inconsistent and that she had used AI during the interview.
The panel said: ‘With regard to the personal component, (she) denied the allegation and has expressed no remorse or apology.
‘Her dishonest use of AI was compounded by her subsequent lies and by seeking to cast doubt on the professional integrity and veracity of the HCPC witnesses.
‘Whilst she acknowledged in her evidence that using AI to assist her in her job interview would be cheating and “a great offence”, she has shown no insight as how cheating in a job interview would undermine the integrity of the recruitment process; have a potentially negative impact on the Trust in having to address deficits in the knowledge and expertise of the person recruited; potentially jeopardise patient care in being treated by a Dietitian who didn’t have the knowledge and skills she claimed to have.
‘Given the attitudinal nature of (her) misconduct, and the absence of any evidence of remorse, insight, or remediation, the Panel considered that there was a significant risk of repetition.
‘The Panel found (her) to be untrustworthy in her willingness to tell lies in the course of her evidence and impugn the professional integrity of the HCPC’s witnesses.
‘The Panel therefore concluded that (her) fitness to practise is impaired at a personal level.’
The panel concluded that she would be struck from the register and that an interim suspension order of 18 months would be imposed to cover the period in which she can still appeal,
-Mailonline
