165 upvotes, 21 direct replies (showing 21)
View submission: Study: 94% Of AI-Generated College Writing Is Undetected By Teachers
There’s only two ways to fix this, at least as I see things.
The preferred thing would be to convince students (somehow) that using AI isn’t in their best interest and they should do the work themselves because it’s better for them in the long run. The problem is that this just seems extremely unlikely to happen.
The second option is to move all writing to an in-class structure. I don’t think it should take up regular class time so I’d envision a writing “lab” component where students would, once a week, have to report to a classroom space and devote their time to writing. Ideally this would be done by hand, and all reference materials would have to be hard copies. But no access to computers would be allowed.
The alternative is to just give up on getting real writing.
Comment by archival-banana at 01/12/2024 at 01:07 UTC
96 upvotes, 6 direct replies
First one won’t work because some colleges and professors are convinced it’s a tool, similar to how calculators were seen as cheating back in the day. I’m required to use AI in one of my writing courses.
Comment by xXxdethl0rdxXx at 01/12/2024 at 01:50 UTC
22 upvotes, 5 direct replies
How about we challenge our educational institutions to test differently? In the real world, you're often asked to actually engage people in conversations that naturally exhibit your depth and breadth of knowledge on a subject (at least in the kind of white-collar careers you're going to college for). A 15 or 30-minute conversation with a teacher would do wonders to combat this problem, and probably help students retain this information much better.
I remember so many discussions I had with my best teachers and professors in school on subjects I was interested in. I can't remember a single essay I ever wrote.
Comment by milkandtunacasserole at 01/12/2024 at 01:19 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
oral tests, writing speeches and talks on your topic is probably the best alternative. Even if they use AI at least they are learning public speaking, memorization, and improve answering.
Comment by Important_Dark_9164 at 01/12/2024 at 01:16 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The problem is professors assign work that is best done by an AI.
Comment by archangel0198 at 01/12/2024 at 02:53 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Ironically enough, you can use AI to ensure students do not use AI, it's just how far you are willing to go and balancing privacy.
For example - have the tests be online but the student must answer the questions orally, and recorded on file via a testing platform. Then have it match the student's audio profile to ensure that it's really the person.
Transcribe the audio answer and grade it automatically.
Comment by [deleted] at 01/12/2024 at 03:01 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Pixikr at 01/12/2024 at 10:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We see industry after industry trying to save a buck switching to ai. Why should students care ? You’re being truthfull and doing the work yourself? Congrats, the field you are working towards just got bulldozed by ai but you’re locked in and in debt already. Might as well get efficient with ChatGPT because honesty and integrity is being punished anyway.
Comment by specks_of_dust at 01/12/2024 at 12:22 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I had a history professor who didn’t assign papers, but had essay questions on the exams. He gave us 3 topics and told us we’d be able to choose between 2 of the topics for the exam. The third would not be on the exam. This forced us to study at least two of the topics, because if you studied only one, it might be the one that wasn’t on the exam. It was simple, but brilliant.
At this point, I’m kind of shocked that schools and professors haven’t adapted. Having students write their own papers is a thing of the past. Detecting real work, proving authenticity, and grading papers fairly are pipe dreams. People and institutions fighting this reality are willfully making their jobs impossible.
Comment by SquarePegRoundWorld at 01/12/2024 at 13:26 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
they should do the work themselves because it’s better for them in the long run.
All that hard work the next president and his goons have done really shows kids that hard work pays off.
Comment by JudgmentalOwl at 01/12/2024 at 13:55 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The 2nd option is viable but schools may not have the resources for adding additional labs like that. The simplest way to do things would just be to weight in class exams more heavily so if students flunk those they get bad grades.
Comment by SaucyCouch at 01/12/2024 at 14:26 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Is writing the new cursive? Dead and outdated?
:o
Comment by -The_Blazer- at 01/12/2024 at 14:51 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Agree on 2. except I think there's nothing wrong with using computers to write (after learning the ropes in primary school), as long as the only thing you use them for is ACTUALLY WRITING (so obviously no generative assist and perhaps no spellcheck until later). There's already plenty of computer systems that are strictly locked down in this manner, I think those English for foreigners exams use them.
Comment by Crypt0Nihilist at 01/12/2024 at 15:37 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The problem is that this just seems extremely unlikely to happen.
The immaturity of the people you need to convince is a huge problem here. I've heard hints of it in this thread, but had it crystalised for me recently elsewhere. A student was complaining that they were being made to do work and their only "pay" was in grades, as if it was some great scam because adults are paid money for their work!
Even adults don't always appreciate that the purpose of essays isn't the final grade, bur the work that goes into getting it, of understanding the material and articulating your position in a compelling way. If you outsource that you have played the system, but played yourself too. Maybe that'll be enough to get the job you want, but you might find that you can't do it or you can't progress because you're not as good as the people who earned the same grade.
Comes back to the adage, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
Of course, we need to set all this against that society often rewards cheaters and the skills taught and rewarded in academia are not those valued in other domains. If all society is doing is gatekeeping with some qualifications for reasons other than ability, fraud becomes a tool for greater equality.
Comment by RezrukHacim at 01/12/2024 at 17:21 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I genuinely think the alternative of "giving up on real writing" is kind of a valid option. This is the same thing that has been happening in math as calculators and other technology have become accessible and better we gave up on doing calculations.
Now, speaking as a high school math teacher, the level we gave up is too far. It has resulted in some students who won't even multiply or divide by 10 without plugging it in a calculator, they have no sense for how big or small various numbers are, and they still don't know how to use the calculators... (Many of them literally just ask their phone verbally because they don't know a fraction is just division). These are obviously consequences, but there are upsides.
I teach a statistics course and instead of focusing on tedious computation (think standard deviation of 40 numbers) we can instead plug it into Excel or Google Sheets and then we can focus on the interpretation and meaning. We still do a little tedious computation, but then we get to focus on bigger picture ideas, and we get to use real-world data that would have been too big to use without technology. Now, will some students still need to understand the formulas so they can revise them for various purposes or code with them? Yes. But most don't. It will take time, and there are things that will be lost, but I assume it will eventually be accepted and there will also be things gained. Instead of "write this paper on ______", it can be "here are 4 ai papers on ______. Examine the tone, content, clarity, etc. of each and pick the best one". Just like with math we will still need some people doing real writing too, but probably not the majority of the population.
Also, building off other posts, we know when students cheat, but we are expected to be cops/detectives/lawyers when proving it.
Comment by fast-pancakes at 01/12/2024 at 17:57 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It can never be fixed because college is for profit, as long as they make money, they don't care that you are cheating.
Comment by szpaceSZ at 01/12/2024 at 19:52 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
"by hand" will severely disadvantage kids with bad graphomotoric skills.
This is very unfair and unacceptable today, when typing of available and the primary way of getting things done in writing anyway.
Comment by urpoviswrong at 02/12/2024 at 07:42 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
There might actually be a viable use for NFTs/Blockchain technologies here. The edit history of the word document should be on the block chain, a QR code for the NFT and its entire block chain of edits for the whole paper needs to be printed out at the bottom of the paper.
Or a digital signature included if submitted digitally.
Imma repost this as amain response, actually.
Comment by penguinpolitician at 02/12/2024 at 18:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You could ruthlessly kick out students who can't prove their ability to write.
Comment by FriedTreeSap at 03/12/2024 at 18:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Another option would be to give each student an oral exam about the contents of their paper. It’s not perfect, but if a student doesn’t know a thing about their paper it should be obvious, alternatively if they did use Ai, but still internalized the information, at least they learned something.
Comment by Scrung3 at 01/12/2024 at 08:52 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
AI can be helpful to brainstorm and help you in understanding certain things, just never for writing things out for you (unless it's to improve grammar on your own text).
Comment by RandomFireDragon at 01/12/2024 at 01:35 UTC*
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Personally, I'd make all of the students write their essays in a google doc and then review the document's edit history. I'm sure some students would get away with it, but most of the students dumb enough to copy-paste AI-generated text are dumb enough not to cover up their tracks properly