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Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

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Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#111

Post by AJ007 »

extr wrote: post #30

The amount of non-technical people who have very little intuition around the limitations of LLMs is actually fairly startling - and I like to think of myself of someone who is usually good at that kind of thing. The realistic/coherence of the output is just so convincing, people cannot seem to stop themselves from attributing a theory of mind to it. Just earlier this week I saw someone saying that they were creating…

How many people believe horoscopes and astrology carry any meaning? Most will never comprehend LLMs or even the simplest concepts of machine learning.

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#112

Post by flutas »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #63
flutas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This doesn’t sound like he’s failing the entire class. In the email he also says "I am giving everyone in the class an X." > X (grade not submitted): If you do not assign a grade, an “X” defined as “grade not submitted” is automatically assigned. No student can graduate with an “X” on his/her academic record. I think the term "fails" is wrong in the title, but he is essentially blocking them from graduating at this…

I was reading that X as a variable, not a particular grade. As in, your grade is X, where X can be A, B, C, D, or F.

Yeah, College grades for transcripts are a bit different in that you typically will have the standard range (A-F), but then you have other "status" grades.

The ones I know of are:

P: Pass (no actual grade, just pass or fail for some classes)

F: Fail (no actual grade, just pass or fail for some classes)

I: Incomplete (usually a medical or family related emergency)

N: Delayed (usually for internships where you get feedback after a normal grade is posted)

X: Not submitted (explained above)

W: Withdrawn (student withdrew from the course, usually no impact to GPA just a mark for some colleges who only allow N number of chances at a course)

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#113

Post by Xcelerate »

extr wrote: post #30

The amount of non-technical people who have very little intuition around the limitations of LLMs is actually fairly startling - and I like to think of myself of someone who is usually good at that kind of thing. The realistic/coherence of the output is just so convincing, people cannot seem to stop themselves from attributing a theory of mind to it. Just earlier this week I saw someone saying that they were creating…

> The amount of non-technical people who have very little intuition around the limitations of LLMs is actually fairly startling

Is this surprising though? To be honest, I don’t think we have any such thing as “AI experts” currently. LeCun, Hinton, etc. were early pioneers in neural networks and Hutter did a lot of the first work with reinforcement learning, but none of these people seem to agree on much now with regard to AGI, and I wouldn’t even say they have any particularly deep insight into LLMs beyond that of a research scientist at OpenAI (perhaps less even, given the time spent on social priorities now).

We’re reaching a point where it’s likely that further development just isn’t going to be well-understood by either the general public or the people creating the tech, and this will lead to a lot of “voodoo” explanations of how things work. Progress is increasingly driven by trying things and seeing what works rather than a theory-first approach, and whenever this occurs, a lot of mysticism tends to accompany the process.

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#114

Post by CuriousCosmic »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #39
binarymax wrote: post #20

To the teachers I know, I’ve been recommending that if they are paranoid about GPT, they can ask the students to cite material from a physical textbook in their assignments. Even if the students type the textbook into ChatGPT at least they read the material. This is beside the point of whether current education needs to be improved, and whether GPT is going to force some change here - but this is a useful stopgap. te…

As someone who was a student over a decade ago, I'd lose my fucking mind if I had to use physical books. There was simply not enough time to go get books off the shelf and complete all my assignments. Everything was done digitally, I can't think of a single exception in college. I once turned in a math exam written using LaTeX and the professor initially declined to grade it. I did concede that I hadn't followed the…

I think the phrase "physical textbooks" was less of the "of the material world" definition of physcial but rather was implying "real, professionally published".

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#115

Post by RheingoldRiver »

RajT88 wrote: post #62
sidewndr46 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was a student over a decade ago, I'd lose my fucking mind if I had to use physical books. There was simply not enough time to go get books off the shelf and complete all my assignments. Everything was done digitally, I can't think of a single exception in college. I once turned in a math exam written using LaTeX and the professor initially declined to grade it. I did concede that I hadn't followed the…

I was a student more like 20 years ago. I had a lot of physical books as well. There's different use cases. If you are searching for a specific piece of information - digital all the way. If you are trying to digest material in a linear fashion, I find a physical book works better for me. Less distractions.

I'd agree with this take. I love reading physical books to learn new subject areas. It's one of my favorite things to do period, as a hobby. Lie down in bed with a physical book & have someone tell you the most important things they learned in life, organized into chapters.

For research I think it's good to use a mix. You won't get good "unknown unknowns" if all you do is search for facts. Some reading of articles and books is good.

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#116

Post by willvarfar »

kevviiinn wrote: post #71
mjhay wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next assignment will be run through ChatGPT as well, with presumably the same results - resulting in failure and escalation to the academic dishonesty office.

Sounds like the professor is the dishonest one here

Hanlon's razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" applies. This is an ignorant professor, not a dishonest one?

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#117

Post by gzer0 »

adjav wrote: post #80
insanitybit wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT can cite physical textbooks though

It can certainly make up things that look like citations. It definitely cannot produce a series of valid inline citations for specific quotes, rephrasings, or statistics.

GPT-4 with browsing-mode enabled (beta) does present citations to real sources, with clickable links.

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#118

Post by falcolas »

thadt wrote: post #28

The ability to 'cheat' on written assignments has always been a possibility. With the rise of the Internet, it became easier to source it from more places - with a counter balancing rise of plagiarism detectors. Now with Google, Grammarly and ChatGPT, it is trivial to copy/paste a pipeline with enough entropy to defeat many if not most detectors. I suspect the next generation of tools will be finish this cycle - we w…

> how they produced it is less important than the result

A correct result includes how the result was reached. Thanks to patent and copyright laws, not all paths to a "right" answer are correct in the real world either. In college, this means that the professor's rules against ChatGPT need to be respected to create a "right" result.

Re: Texas professor fails entire class from graduating- claiming they used ChatGTP

#120

Post by abdullahkhalids »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #41
jimbob45 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been saying this for a while. There are very simple and effective ways to teach your class that can't be cheated with AI. These professors are simply lazy and uncreative.

Speaking as an (assistant) professor in theoretical CS, I see there are many bad approaches in the original post and mentioned in this discussion, but I strongly disagree with: > There are very simple and effective ways to teach your class that can't be cheated with AI. These professors are simply lazy and uncreative. I can attest to the following problems to good homework creation, from my own experiences playing wi…

For programming CS exams, you can try doing them in a computer lab with internet disabled. These exams should be allotted time much more than needed as one should not be testing for problem solving under strict time constraints.

FYI its oral exams, not oral presentations. You give the student half an hour to solve a sequence of problems and gauge their thinking skills. Scales to perhaps 30 students at most.

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