Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays • Hacker News Board

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#181

Post by piokoch » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:18 AM UTC

dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc?

Who the hell came out with such an idea. I would even hesitate to use "AI" for automatic spell checking as it is sufficient to give some character unusual name and it will be marked as error.

My guess is that soon or later people will learn how to game that AI. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some software that will generate essay that Utah "AI" likes.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#182

Post by pzs » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #157

dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

When I was a child I was obsessed with the "grade level" function in Microsoft Word. It was a preference you could enable on spell check to tell you the "grade level" of your writing. Every essay I wrote, I'd always force myself to reach the max "12.0" grade level. While writing I'd struggle over word choice, sentence structure, rearranging paragraphs, working on my tone etc, all in pursuit of the 12th grade way to p…

Arguably, Hemingway's texts are well written. One of the sources of power of his prose is the use of simple words, and basic sentence structures. I bet Word would classify that as below 12th grade.

The point I am trying to make in agreement with the parent is: there are qualities that are very hard to score with algorithms. The difficulty of solving this problem equals if not exceeds that of automated translation, which still only works properly for specialized and limited domains, e.g. weather forecasts.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#183

Post by dagw » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #181

dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

My guess is that soon or later people will learn how to game that AI.

Already been done. http://lesperelman.com/writing-assessment-robo-grading/babel...

Here's a sample essay that is complete nonsense and got a perfect score on the GRE.

http://lesperelman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/6-6_ScoreI...

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#184

Post by mrarjen » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

Reminds me of the plagiarism checker they had at my partners university, they would check identical words on specific subjects... Meaning every word in any order, so naturally there is a high % of overlap not only with quotes but also the words used regarding the subject, the teacher would take this literally as "you did not write this yourself" if 10% of words would be similar.

Don't think anyone passed that class.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#185

Post by thombat » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #183

piokoch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

My guess is that soon or later people will learn how to game that AI. Already been done. http://lesperelman.com/writing-assessment-robo-grading/babel... Here's a sample essay that is complete nonsense and got a perfect score on the GRE. http://lesperelman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/6-6_ScoreI...

The final paragraph from that example is steaming gibberish that nobody could mistake for English:

"Calling has not, and undoubtedly never will be aggravating in the way we encounter mortification but delineate the reprimand that should be inclination. Nonetheless, armed with the knowledge that the analysis augurs stealth with propagandists, almost all of the utterances on my authorization journey. Since sanctions are performed at knowledge, a quantity of vocation can be more gaudily inspected. Knowledge will always be a part of society.Vocation is the most presumptuously perilous assassination of mankind."

Yet the robo-scoring acclaims it as:

* articulates a clear and insightful position on the issue in accordance with the assigned task * develops the position fully with compelling reasons and/or persuasive examples * sustains a well-focused, well-organized analysis, connecting ideas logically * conveys ideas fluently and precisely, using effective vocabulary and sentence variety * demonstrates superior facility with the conventions of standard written English (i.e., grammar, usage, and mechanics) but may have minor errors

Any teacher faced with the requirement to use such tools would be better placed instructing their class on civil disobedience.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#186

Post by tonyedgecombe » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #179

kwhitefoot wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the false positive rate is likely to be?

Who cares? The positives must be evaluated by a human anyway.

Who cares?

The people whose lives are ruined by being mis-identified by the system.

The positives must be evaluated by a human anyway.

Those same people whose lack of competence people are bemoaning throughout these comments.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#187

Post by rocqua » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:34 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #179

kwhitefoot wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the false positive rate is likely to be?

Who cares? The positives must be evaluated by a human anyway.

Humans will still let false positives through. And false accusations of child Abuse have significant ramifications.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#188

Post by maze-le » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:37 AM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #181

dahart wrote: post #133

> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said. Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is b…

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

>> Who the hell came out with such an idea.

I'd guess this is a product of dwindling state finances and contempt for any form of real education. AI's are orders of magnitude cheaper than real teachers. They also don't form unions and wouldn't voice any opposition against changes in the curiculum.

They are also pretty useless, as you have pointed out. The consequences of this policy will be postponed until the students reach a certain age -- that'll be like 10-15 years in the future.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#189

Post by maze-le » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:39 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #183

piokoch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I can't believe what I am reading. The idea that some "AI" grades essays automatically is idiotic and has nothing to do with education. Where is the place for discussions? Where is the place for ideas confrontation? Where is the place for writing style development? How this AI is supposed to grade things like repetitions (that can be either good rhetorical tool or a mistake, depending on context), etc? Who t…

My guess is that soon or later people will learn how to game that AI. Already been done. http://lesperelman.com/writing-assessment-robo-grading/babel... Here's a sample essay that is complete nonsense and got a perfect score on the GRE. http://lesperelman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/6-6_ScoreI...

That reads like it was written by a GPT-2 bot.

Re: Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays

#190

Post by belorn » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 7:46 AM UTC

DoctorOetker wrote: post #114

dredmorbius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has federal child abuse mandatory reporting requirement laws which include teachers and school staff and personnel, as well as additional state requirements which vary but include, for 11 states, faculty, staff, and volunteers at public or private higher education institutions. Computer and IT professionals are also covered in cases. Faculty, administrators, athletics staff, or other employees and volunteers a…

so ... nobody wonders about the obvious rammification: then any ML scoring systems ... must detect child abuse signals!

That is not how the law work. The law states that if people at a school is made aware or suspect abuse then they must act on that knowledge. A ML scoring system is obviously unable to be made aware or having suspicions, but the administrators could be help responsible if they happen to see something and chooses to not act.

It would be interesting to know if a child psychiatrist could be held liable if incompetence prevented them from seeing obvious sign of abuse, but I doubt that is covered under the cited law above.