‘But there is a difference between recognising AI use and proving its use. So I tried an experiment. … I received 122 paper submissions. Of those, the Trojan horse easily identified 33 AI-generated papers. I sent these stats to all the students and gave them the opportunity to admit to using AI before they were locked into failing the class. Another 14 outed themselves. In other words, nearly 39% of the submissions were at least partially written by AI.‘
Article archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20251125225915/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/set-trap-to-catch-students-cheating-ai_uk_691f20d1e4b00ed8a94f4c01
Distillation:
The only problem I have with the whole “Don’t be afraid to fail” thing, is that so much rides on the grades a student receives it makes it very difficult to not treat every assignment as a highly critical task which must be as close to perfect as possible. I totally agree with this professor and I believe he did the right thing by the students. The problem is the system itself.
Those who are going to outsource their work are likely to always outsource their work or take the path of least resistance. You can’t moral lesson or embarrass that away, usually. But the rest of the class seems to have learned a valuable lesson, or at least learned how to cheat better.
Regardless, we need to stop having everything boil down to the grades. There’s good reasons grades are important, but there are even more that are detrimental. I don’t know the answer, I just know the system is broken. Maybe it’s just capitalism that’s broken.
Society: “don’t be afraid to fail!”
Also society: actively punishes failure with intricate systems such as admissions, CV screening, and increasing fewer safety nets
holding a gun to your head “why are you so nervous?”
When failure means having to pay another thousand or more to retake the subject and spending another year at uni, I can understand why some people would take the easy route
The most ironic part of this is, if those kids did understand the basics of Marxism, they’d be able to see this much more clearly.
I fully agree. This was decades in the making. Good grades became the only important thing, we told students every day they won’t amount to anything if they don’t have straight As and then act surprised when they panic and use any tool to make it.
But we also leave them alone with a bunch of technology way too young which fosters a mentality of “Why do it myself when I’ve so many ways to have it done by a computer”.
I agree, the biggest thing that stood out to me here is that they were afraid to fail. If students were focused on creating the work that appeals to them, rather than just the work that will get the highest grade, think of the creativity that could be explored. Instead students are just focused on saying the “right answers” and dont get to think critically about the material. Sad
And it’s ironic because once I let that go my grades improved. Professors wanted me to think for myself and do something weird, but only when I thought for myself.
My undergraduate school didn’t assign grades below a C. If you did piss-poorly, the class just didn’t show up on your transcript. This encouraged me to take classes I might otherwise have avoided, if I was worried about my GPA.
nothing embarrassing about outsourcing work
I’m not going to stop using a calculator or spreadsheets, we already use spell checkers and text editors, matlab and wolfram alpha will do some rather complicated math almost entirely for you (you still have to set it up)
the arts are just facing the reality now (i acknowledge it is worse with how much ai will do for you)
i appreciate that this prof was coming from a place of teaching and not punishment
the only issue is the students turned off their brain and got lazy, removing grades sadly won’t stop this behavior
Nobody was talking about using tools to arrive at objective answers. Math, at least at the lower levels, doesn’t require creativity. Writing is something wholly different. When you are outsourcing your writing it no longer says anything about you. It’s creatively bankrupt.
I’m not wholly opposed to AI. I realize its an inevitability. But at least in this case, especially for writing, you’re only cheating yourself. So yeah, I think it is embarrassing to outsource that type of work.
that’s kinda my point, there was a time in math where approach did say something about you at the further edges which are much more standardized and route now
math in real application is much less objective than common thought would place it
outsourcing with clear intent and final control of the work saying what you intended (directly anyway) seems perfectly fine
your argument on ai is pretty much exactly the same thing my now 80+ math prof had for not using calculators or computers
The difference here is that your final sentence in your previous comment is what AI is specifically used for, not just in school but everywhere. Though I do agree that removing grades won’t fix it:
The way AI is used is exactly for that reason. To turn off your brain and get the right answer without understanding the how or why - or even if there is a right answer or not. Writing and the entire breath of the arts are different from STEM in that oftentimes there is only your voice and what you want to say, and using AI largely removes your voice from the process.
It’s not an issue inherent to AI in this regard, but AI definitely exacerbates it by making it much easier. Let the robot tell you what to think and what the correct answer is.
When I was still doing math in school, they wanted us to write out the equations that we used to get our answer and most teachers would give you partial credit even if you got the wrong answer as long as they could understand the logic of how you got there, because the point wasn’t to get the answer right so much as to prove that you understood the concepts. And even then, it was constantly drilled into us that getting a good grade was the only thing that mattered. The rote memorization and regurgitating the desired answer for every test in every subject practically killed my love of learning. It took me years after getting out of school to realize again that I actually did enjoy learning new things. AI simply allows kids to regurgitate the correct answer faster and more efficiently, with less effort on their part. It’s Cliff Notes without even having to look at the Notes part - just ask Cliff to write your answer for you. The way school is set up unfortunately outright encourages this thought process.
The modern school system was created partially during the industrial revolution in order to churn out factory workers who could repeat a rote task day in and day out. It wasn’t created to make free thinkers and inspire creativity, and how we use AI reflects that. There’s no desire there to put in the effort to say what you want to say or an enjoyment of the process (which is a major thing that a lot of artists enjoy about creating - the process can be even more important than the final product), only the desire to obtain a “good” product, whether that’s a good grade or something else like Gen AI images to post for Twitter likes.
agree with everything you’ve written here
grew up in a poor area, mom was a teacher where we lived through ‘no child left behind’, having gone to a rich kid college and seen what the other side learns like it’s pretty eye opening
not everyone is taught like they are a cog
Yeah. Afraid to fail is bullshit, just like a college degree has become bullshit. Right down to actually needing to take prerequisite base classes to get your degree in something. Almost no one goes to college because they have a general thirst for knowledge. They go so they can get a job, or because mommy and daddy told them to go.
Listening to a guy talk in a 200 person class you’re paying six figures to attend while in the age of the internet is stupid.
I get what you’re saying in general, but I don’t think most profs actually want their students to fail when they’re actively trying. I assume that the assignment where he asked them to “read and reflect” on an essay that it was probably something ungraded. I know there are some courses (especially large lecture ones where there could be hundreds of students in one class) where you don’t have a lot of signposts other than tests telling you how you’re doing in a class, but there really should be something outside graded assignments for you to get feedback on.
I dunno… What if a bunch of students got together, seized a data center, then used the AI hardware inside to generate their papers on Marxism?
Seize the means of computation!
The Proletarians have nothing to lose except their
chainssubscriptions!