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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

bloomberg.com

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Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#11

Post by HarryHirsch »

rolph wrote: post #4

convergence will occur, measurable by increasing frequency of false positives output by detection.

You mean model collapse, because schoolchildren will soon base their writing on the awful AI slop they have read online? That's fearsome, actually.

We are seeing this with Grammarly already, where instead of a nuance Grammarly picks the beige alternative. The forerunner was the Plain English Campaign, which succeeded in official documents publicised in imprecise language at primary school reading level, it's awful.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#13

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #3

My daughter’s 7th grade work is 80% flagged as AI. She is a very good writer, it’s interesting to see how poorly this will go. Obviously we will go back to in class writing.

The article demonstrates that good, simple prose is being flagged as AI-generated. Reminds me of a misguided junior high English teacher that half-heartedly claimed I was a plagiarist for including the word "masterfully" in an essay, when she knew I was too stupid to use a word like that. These tools are industrializing that attitude and rolling it to teachers that otherwise wouldn't feel that way.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#14

Post by underseacables »

rowanG077 wrote: post #7

This has nothing to do with AI, but rather about proof. If a teacher said to a student you cheated and the student disputes it. Then in front of the dean or whatever the teacher can produce no proof of course the student would be absolved. Why is some random tool (AI or not) saying they cheated without proof suddenly taken as truth?

Universities don't exactly decide guilt by proof. If their system says you're guilty, that's pretty much it.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#15

Post by Ekaros »

nitwit005 wrote: post #10

In some cases students have fought such accusations by showing their professor the tool flags the professor's work. Don't know why these companies are spending so much developing this technology, when their customers clearly aren't checking how well it works.

Aren't they exactly making it because their customers are not checking it and still buy it probably for very decent money. And always remember buyers are not end users, either the teachers or students, but the administrators. And for them showing doing something about risk of AI is more important than actually doing anything about it.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#16

Post by [deleted] »

underseacables wrote: post #14
rowanG077 wrote: post #7

This has nothing to do with AI, but rather about proof. If a teacher said to a student you cheated and the student disputes it. Then in front of the dean or whatever the teacher can produce no proof of course the student would be absolved. Why is some random tool (AI or not) saying they cheated without proof suddenly taken as truth?

Universities don't exactly decide guilt by proof. If their system says you're guilty, that's pretty much it.

[deleted]

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#17

Post by radioactivist »

gradus_ad wrote: post #12

Seems like the easy fix here is move all evaluation in-class. Are schools really that reliant on internet/computer based assignments? Actually, this could be a great opportunity to dial back unnecessary and wasteful edu-tech creep.

Out of class evaluations doesn't mean electronic. It could be problem sets, essays, longer-form things like projects. All of these things are difficult to do in a limited time window.

These limited time-window assessments are also (a) artificial (don't always reflect how the person might use their knowledge later) (b) stressful (some people work better/worse with a clock ticking) and (c) subject to more variability due to the time pressure (what if you're a bit sick, or have had a bad day or are just tired during the time window?).

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#18

Post by jmugan »

My daughter was accused of turning in an essay written by AI because the school software at her online school said so. Her mom watched her write the essay. I thought it was common knowledge that it was impossible to tell whether text was generated by AI. Evidently, the software vendors are either ignorant or are lying, and school administrators are believing them.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#19

Post by happymellon »

rowanG077 wrote: post #7

This has nothing to do with AI, but rather about proof. If a teacher said to a student you cheated and the student disputes it. Then in front of the dean or whatever the teacher can produce no proof of course the student would be absolved. Why is some random tool (AI or not) saying they cheated without proof suddenly taken as truth?

Unfortunately with AI, AI detection, and schools its all rather Judge Dredd.

They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Why? Because they *are* the law.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#20

Post by ameister14 »

The article mentions 'responsible' grammarly usage, which I think is an oxymoron in an undergraduate or high school setting. Undergrad and high school is where you learn to write coherently. Grammarly is a tool that actively works against that goal because it doesn't train students to fix the grammatical mistakes, it just fixes it for them and they become steadily worse (and less detail oriented) writers.

I have absolutely no problem using it in a more advanced field where the basics are already done and the focus is on research, for example, but at lower levels I'd likely consider it dishonest.

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