Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 302 posts

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#71

Post by inimino »

VikingCoder wrote: post #39
rhexs wrote: 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.

What my mom saw had an ID number on it. No other demographics. And she was grading from multiple states. So do what? Contact her local police? With a written accusation from a child? Is that enough to get a warrant to force the company to release the demographic information? And people don't work at a job like that because they want to. They work there because they need the money. Everything she took in and out of th…

> So do what? Contact her local police?

Collect or photograph all the evidence, record every conversation with supervisors, escalate as much as possible internally, then contact local police, and at the same time go to the media. Don't quit, but if necessary let them fire you and then sue. None of this is easy.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#72

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #58
harry8 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

As a kid I would go out of my way to fail those tests. The whole curriculum was designed around them, meaning that even if we did score high, any funding gains would just be put towards training us to take the test.

I thought the state was holding the school hostage, threatening to cut funds or shut them down if they ever stopped. We never learned anything about civics or American history. Until I was out of highschool, content regarding atrocities like slavery and the trail of tears was not on the test and that was enough to whitewash the whole curriculum.

Standardized testing is to the U.S. what lead waterpipes were to the roman empire.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#73

Post by rkagerer »

I'm normally pretty open minded but this is just stupid. AI is nowhere near literate enough for this task. What kind of world is it when humans create merely for the consumption of machines. The product of our creativity deserves better.

I would support any student who refuses to consent to their work being used in this fashion.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#74

Post by garmaine »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #29
sjg007 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be mandatory reporters at least in the USA.

School contractors are mandatory reporters, but I suspect that may not qualify.

These would not be school contractors.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#76

Post by inimino »

harry8 wrote: post #34
VikingCoder wrote: post #15

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.

Of course some kids are manipulative, going for shock value, continuing an "in-joke", or just plain trolling. But would a teacher just look the other way, or would they talk to the kid? What would you want for your kids? This is why teachers assigning homework like "what do you want your teacher to know about you" and then not even seeing it is dehumanizing.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#78

Post by empath75 »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #48
empath75 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Poor sentence structure and grammar, 1 point out of five. Sorry your daddy touches you.’

Punch up, not down.

You really misread that if you thought I was punching down. I was pointing out the absurdity of having to even grade such a thing.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#79

Post by kazinator »

solveit wrote: post #25
gibolt wrote: 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.

So will humans. With AI, the model and training data are auditable and, if necessary, modifiable. You can't audit a person's life history and you can only really modify a grader by replacing them, and it's much less socially damaging to retrain a model than to fire an employee. AI certainly has a lot of potential for bias, but claims that AI bias is somehow worse than good old human bias always seem shoddily supporte…

> but claims that AI bias is somehow worse than good old human bias always seem shoddily supported

Well, AI bias can combine sampling bias with human bias. Like say we train the AI with the output of only 10 human paper graders, all chosen from the same school district.

Due to the sampling bias, that data could create markedly more (or less!) bias than the entire population of human paper-graders.

The resulting AI will ideally mimic those 10 humans, though; it shouldn't show more bias than that group. If those 10 are flaring racists, and grade accordingly, the AI will be the same. (In fact, we hope that it will be the same, if the algorithm actually works in mimicking human grading.)

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#80

Post by [deleted] »

jakear wrote: post #3

“In most machine scoring states, any of the randomly selected essays with wide discrepancies between human and machine scores are referred to another human for review”. And “between 5 to 20 percent” of essays are randomly selected for human review. So the takeaway is that if you’re one of the 80-95% of (typically black or female) people who the machine scored dramatically lower, but are not selected for human review,…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN