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It Wasn't AI

itwasntai.com

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Re: It Wasn't AI

#81

Post by asdajksah2123 »

aripickar wrote: post #12

IMO one of the way that most schools are going to end up being able to detect plagiarism is going to be a custom word processor (or something similar) that can track all of the edits made into a document. Basically, have the students type an essay where all of the keystrokes are recorded by the program, and so it can be detected by the program whether someone is copy and pasting whole essays, or if someone is actuall…

Wouldn't it still be easier to type out the entire AI generated assignment than to come up with an assignment and then type out the assignment you came up with yourself?

Re: It Wasn't AI

#82

Post by akiselev »

chongli wrote: post #77
rorroe53 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

Because educational institutions aren’t in the business of selling education: they give that away for free. Seriously, walk into any university campus and into a lecture hall, sit down and take notes. No one will stop you! No one will check ID. You can even talk to the professor and 99% of the time they’ll give you access to the course materials online at well. What students are paying for is accreditation. It’s not…

> Because educational institutions aren’t in the business of selling education: they give that away for free. Seriously, walk into any university campus and into a lecture hall, sit down and take notes. No one will stop you! No one will check ID. You can even talk to the professor and 99% of the time they’ll give you access to the course materials online at well.

Can confirm. When I was a senior in high school, a professor at Caltech even sponsored me as a visiting faculty member so I could check out books from the university libraries. No one in the administration even blinked an eye.

I ended up auditing several graduate aerospace classes like Ae105 & Ae121 and even worked on the AAReSt [1] thermal systems group project with several other graduate students who seemed to tolerate me most of the time. I still carry the ID around in my wallet as a keepsake.

[1] https://www.pellegrino.caltech.edu/aarest1

Re: It Wasn't AI

#83

Post by gridspy »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #81
aripickar wrote: post #12

IMO one of the way that most schools are going to end up being able to detect plagiarism is going to be a custom word processor (or something similar) that can track all of the edits made into a document. Basically, have the students type an essay where all of the keystrokes are recorded by the program, and so it can be detected by the program whether someone is copy and pasting whole essays, or if someone is actuall…

Wouldn't it still be easier to type out the entire AI generated assignment than to come up with an assignment and then type out the assignment you came up with yourself?

Obviously typing from start to finish with few edits is also a "failed" result in such a program. Someone actually writing an essay should be creating structure, taking notes, rearranging paragraphs etc.

Then again you have a good point. Often you blat out an essay and then edit it. Same thing goes with typing in an AI generated template.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#84

Post by bsder »

valine wrote: post #68
jandrese wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 90s I could kind of see this angle, but today it's so easy to set up a Gitlab there is no excuse.

The problem isn't the accessibility of Git. I agree that it's easy enough to set up a Github account today. I've been somewhat of a Git evangelist. I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control. Perhaps I'm just a poor teacher, but in my experience, the features that make version control useful are too esoteric for most people to grasp. This may come off as arrogant and ja…

> I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control.

Don't pitch it as version control. Pitch it as "homework submission process" that has the side benefit of being a backup if their laptop crashes. Students are used to horrible homework submission processes (looking at you Blackboard) and quickly adapt to seeing version control systems as a pretty nice alternative.

And, for about 25% of your class, the lightbulb will go on and they'll start using version control even in their other courses.

> at least 50% of the population is incapable of learning Git without extensive coaching

Mercurial can be taught to mere mortals just fine. Same with Subversion. Same with CVS. I've done that for all three. People tell me that lots of artists use Perforce quite readily.

Git is the only dumbass version control system that revels in being obtuse.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#85

Post by jamilton »

rorroe53 wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

Governments paying for education don't just want graduations, they want an educated workforce, because there are benefits from having that.

Instructors generally do not treat education like a business. On some level the institutions themselves often are business-like, but on the classroom level I don't think that's the case.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#86

Post by simonw »

visarga wrote: post #75
rorroe53 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

People getting into AI today follow courses like: LLM University - https://docs.cohere.com/docs/llmu and never get to learn about linear regression, bias and variance, cost function and gradient descent, regularisation and optimisation - all the good things taught by Andrew Ng in the amazing course he run 12 years ago just before creating Coursera. Is that a good thing?

Learning about those things isn't particularly relevant to learning how to use LLMs for NLP tasks.

Not saying they're not worth learning, but I think it's reasonable for them not to be included in the syllabus for that particular course.

Kind of like how learning memory management in C doesn't need to be a pre-requisite for a course on Python.

Note that learning about those things will likely make you a better LLM+NLP practitioner, in the same way that having a good grasp of memory management in C will help you be more effective at working with Python - but it's OK to leave them out of introductory courses.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#87

Post by dahwolf »

To prove authenticity, be politically incorrect in a way AI never would. You'll be dismissed, canceled and fired, but at least authentically so.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#88

Post by jfghi »

skybrian wrote: post #74
jfghi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems like academic papers force people to back up every statement with a quote and agree with assigned readings. This style of writing leads to unoriginal results.

Isn't that how non-fiction is supposed to work? It's about finding interesting evidence that adds up to something, not making stuff up. Though, ideally by finding interesting evidence in books that aren't in the assigned reading.

It is, but I think that it would lead to a lot of false positives for automated plagiarism detection.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#90

Post by paulddraper »

simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/810/
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