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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

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

#31

Post by zo1 »

borski wrote: post #27
happymellon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not even remotely true. You can raise it with the local board of education. You can sue the board and/or the school. You can sue the university, and likely even win. They literally are not the law, and that is why you can take them to court.

That could take months of nervous waiting and who-knows how many wasted hours researching, talking and writing letters. The same reason most people don't return a broken $11 pot, it's cheaper and easier to just adapt and move around the problem (get a new pot) rather than fixing it by returning and "fighting" for a refund.

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

#32

Post by borski »

zo1 wrote: post #31
borski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even remotely true. You can raise it with the local board of education. You can sue the board and/or the school. You can sue the university, and likely even win. They literally are not the law, and that is why you can take them to court.

That could take months of nervous waiting and who-knows how many wasted hours researching, talking and writing letters. The same reason most people don't return a broken $11 pot, it's cheaper and easier to just adapt and move around the problem (get a new pot) rather than fixing it by returning and "fighting" for a refund.

I agree; I am not saying I am glad this is happening. I am saying it is untrue that universities “are the law.”

They’re not. That doesn’t make it less stressful, annoying, or unnecessary to fight them.

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

#33

Post by borski »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #30
borski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even remotely true. You can raise it with the local board of education. You can sue the board and/or the school. You can sue the university, and likely even win. They literally are not the law, and that is why you can take them to court.

In real life it looks like this: https://www.foxnews.com/us/massachusetts-parents-sue-school-... A kid living in a wealthy Boston suburb used AI for his essay (that much is not in doubt) and the family is now suing the district because the school objected and his chances of getting into a good finishing school have dropped. On the other hand you have students attending abusive online universities who are flagged by t…

I’m not sure what “used AI” means here, and the article is unclear, but it sure does sound like he did have it write it for him, and his parents are trying to “save his college admissions” by trying to say “it doesn’t say anywhere that having AI write it is bad, just having other people write it,” which is a specious argument at best. But again: gleaned from a crappy article.

You don’t need to be rich to change the law. You do need to be determined, and most people don’t have or want to spend the time.

Literally none of that changes the fact that the Universities are not, themselves, the law.

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

#36

Post by flappyeagle »

Rather than flagging it as AI why don’t we flag if it’s good or not?

I work with people in their 30s That cannot write their way out of a hat. Who cares if the work is AI assisted or not. Most AI writing is super dry, formulaic and bad. The student doesn’t recognize this the give them a poor mark for having terrible style.

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

#37

Post by echoangle »

flappyeagle wrote: post #36

Rather than flagging it as AI why don’t we flag if it’s good or not? I work with people in their 30s That cannot write their way out of a hat. Who cares if the work is AI assisted or not. Most AI writing is super dry, formulaic and bad. The student doesn’t recognize this the give them a poor mark for having terrible style.

Because sometimes an exercise is supposed to be done under conditions that don’t represent the real world. If an exam is without calculator, you can’t just use a calculator anyways because you’re going to have one when working, too. If the assignment is „write a text about XYZ, without using AI assistance“, using an AI is cheating. Cheating should have worse consequences than writing bad stuff yourself, so detecting AI (or just not having assignments to do unsupervised) is still important.

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

#39

Post by xnyan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
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?

> the teacher can produce no proof For an assignment completed at home, on a student's device using software of a student's choosing, there can essentially be no proof. If the situation you describe becomes common, it might make sense for a school to invest into a web-based text editor that capture keystrokes and user state and requiring students use that for at-home text-based assignments. That or eliminating take-h…

>For an assignment completed at home, on a student's device using software of a student's choosing, there can essentially be no proof

According to an undergraduate student who babysits for our child, some students are literally screen recording the entire writing process, or even recording themselves writing at their computers as a defense against claims of using AI. I don't know how effective that defense is in practice.

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

#40

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

jmugan wrote: post #18

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.

Imagine how little common knowledge there will be one or two generations down the road after people decide they no longer need general thinking skills, just as they've already decided calculators free them from having to care about arithmetic skills.
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