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Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

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Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#51
post #38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or...report it to the police? I’d gladly risk my job to do the right thing in that instance.

Hand-graded standardized tests are usually anonymized.

Someone could track back the number to the testee, they need to get their grade at least.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#52
post #38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or...report it to the police? I’d gladly risk my job to do the right thing in that instance.

Hand-graded standardized tests are usually anonymized.

It takes a five minute phone call with the company's legal department or a warrant to find out who the kid was. Either way it would need to be escalated to involving law enforcement.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#53
post #30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has a lot more potential for bias than humans. It depends on the input data which is likely heavily biased based on other data set results like face detection. It will only amplify any small bias present in the data.

It's amazing to see how the general opinion of CS people has completely shifted in the last few years from "algorithmic scoring is important in removing the bias from human graders" to the exact opposite.

If we can quantify the bias in the machine, that gives us an opportunity to close the feedback loop and control the bias.

The bias comes from the human-generated training data in the first place; the machine isn't introducing its own. For instance, the machine has no inherent concept of disparaging someone's language because it's from an identifiable inner city dialect. If it picks up that bias, at least it will apply it consistently. When we investigate the machine, the machine will not know that it's being investigated and will not try to conceal its bias from us.

On the other hand, eliminating bias from humans basically means this: producing a new litter of small humans and teaching them better than their predecessors.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#54
post #30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has a lot more potential for bias than humans. It depends on the input data which is likely heavily biased based on other data set results like face detection. It will only amplify any small bias present in the data.

It's amazing to see how the general opinion of CS people has completely shifted in the last few years from "algorithmic scoring is important in removing the bias from human graders" to the exact opposite.

It is important but its not ready.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#55
post #26
post #9

This is my first time learning that AI-graded essays are a thing. Am I the only one who thinks that's insane? I feel like you'd probably have to have an AGI to meaningfully evaluate an essay.

In a forum of CS people I'm surprised this is one of the top opinions. Our field is full of super surprising results like this -- that you don't have to actually understand the text at beyond basic grammar structures to reasonably accurately predict the score a human would give it. Like this kind of thing should be cool , not insane. I mean wasn't it cool in your AI class when you learned that DFS could play Mario if…

Adding further bias against the underprivileged is not "cool". Implenting this while avoiding publicity or providing a means to publically audit the results is doubly not cool.

It is fine to play with "cool" techniques when you are doing consequence free stuff like playing Mario. When you are creating systems that have significant and long term effects of people's lives a different standard applies.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#56
post #26
post #9

This is my first time learning that AI-graded essays are a thing. Am I the only one who thinks that's insane? I feel like you'd probably have to have an AGI to meaningfully evaluate an essay.

In a forum of CS people I'm surprised this is one of the top opinions. Our field is full of super surprising results like this -- that you don't have to actually understand the text at beyond basic grammar structures to reasonably accurately predict the score a human would give it. Like this kind of thing should be cool , not insane. I mean wasn't it cool in your AI class when you learned that DFS could play Mario if…

When I hear a result like "software which understands basic grammar structures can predict what grade a human would give an essay" I think my views are roughly:

* 5% - cool, we could make a company that grades essays

* 15% - cool, we could make a company that grades essays and sell our source code to the test-prep industry

* 80% - fascinating, it sounds like the exam designers need to reevaluate what they are trying to measure with essay questions

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#57
post #9

This is my first time learning that AI-graded essays are a thing. Am I the only one who thinks that's insane? I feel like you'd probably have to have an AGI to meaningfully evaluate an essay.

I remember when I was in middle school 16 years ago, my English classes would have us submit some of our work to a web app. It would then grade the submission. I remember this distinctly because I asked my teacher to intervene on at least two occasions. The app failed to recognize the words "squirrelly" (as in "That guy in the corner has been acting squirrelly.") and "defragment". My teacher decided to subvert the app's recommended grades because she, as a human, understood the intent of my use of those weird words.

To emphasize, this was 16 years ago.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#58
post #34

My mother worked grading standardized tests. It was a hellish job for many reasons (limited breaks, etc.) One question she had to grade was essentially, "What's something you want your teacher to know about you?" It was an essay answer, and she was supposed to grade it on grammar, etc. Just the mechanical aspects of writing. (The real question explained the details more, but that was the core of the question.) She sa…

Some of these will be 100% true as well. But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them. So how many are true and how many false? I have no clue. Literally none. And no it doesn't make me feel any better about the screams of existential agony even if that were a low percentage. Could be high too.

> But don't make the mistake that there are no kids who go for shock value or are wantonly manipulative when they know it can't come back to them.

In the US, school funding is based upon standardized test results, and bad results can shut a poorly performing school down.

It's drilled into every kid's head that these tests are very important, super strict and if they accidentally mess up, it can ruin their academics, because retesting and regrading are expensive.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#59
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nobody involved is incentivized to accurately measure student’s writing ability It's the same reason you see keyword posters in math education. "Together" means "plus", that kind of thing. It's completely worthless, except for one-step problems, and even then it doesn't always work. What is happening is collusion between teachers and testmakers. You can't teach understanding, but you can teach test-passing tec…

I feel like the mistake is assuming that essay writing is about the content. It's just a thing to give the student something barely non-trivial to write about. When your essays are graded they're marked down for mechanical and wording problems. There's really no point in trying or grade 'good ideas' on a subject piece you had maybe 10 minutes to skim.

a subject piece you had maybe 10 minutes to skim

That's a travesty, and you know it because when the kids are in college and they have as much time as they like to write their assignments they all use the wrong words and then misapply them.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#60

My mother worked grading standardized tests. It was a hellish job for many reasons (limited breaks, etc.) One question she had to grade was essentially, "What's something you want your teacher to know about you?" It was an essay answer, and she was supposed to grade it on grammar, etc. Just the mechanical aspects of writing. (The real question explained the details more, but that was the core of the question.) She sa…

I wonder if your mother scored those higher than she might have. And I wonder if that's why such essays were written. Hmm, wonder...
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