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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

#591

Post by TuringNYC »

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.

>> Evidently, the software vendors are either ignorant or are lying, and school administrators are believing them.

This is what will eventually happen. Some component or provider deep in the stack will provide some answer and organizations will be sufficiently shrouded from hard decisions and be able to easily point to "the system."

This happens all the time in the US. Addresses are changed randomly because some address verification system feedback was accepted w/o account owner approval -- call customer service and they say "the system said that your address isnt right", as if the system knows where i've been living for the past 5yrs better than me, better than the DMV, better than the deed on my house. If the error rate is low enough, people just accept it in the US.

Then, it gets worse. Perhaps the error rate isnt low, just that it is high for a sub-group. Then you get to see how you rank in society. Ask brown people in 2003-2006 how fun it was to fly. If you have the wrong last name and zipcode combo in NYC suddenly you arent allowed to rent citibikes despite it operating on public land.

The same will happen with this, unless there is some massive ACLU lawsuit which exposes and the damages will continue until there is a resolution. Quite possibly subtle features on language style will get used as triggers, probably unknowingly. People in the "in-group" who arent exposed will claim it is a fair system while others will be forced to defend themselves and have to provide the burden of proof on a blackbox.

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

#592

Post by dayvid »

noodlesUK wrote: post #570
ninalanyon wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I studied physics at Exeter University they still used the tutorial system and finals. Tutorials were held fortnightly; the tutorial groups were typically three or four students. There was no obligation to turn up to lectures or even tutorials. You just had to pass the end of year exams to be allowed to continue to the final. The class of degree that was awarded depended on the open note final exam and the repor…

Fellow UK person - the style of exam that you describe is pretty hard to cheat unless you can find another person to go in your place. I think various institutions have tried digital invigilation but have had little success (and I think this is just a bad idea anyway). However, you also mentioned a final project. You’d be shocked how much commissioning exists where people have their projects produced for them. I’m no…

Had a good friend who tutored college students and a rich middle-eastern student paid him to do a lot of his work for him.

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

#593

Post by taejo »

bonoboTP wrote: post #536
red_admiral wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is no longer effective to solely use a written essay to measure how deeply a student comprehends a subject. It never was. It's just even more ineffective now that AI exists, than before. The central example of this is college admissions statements. Some kids have the advantage both of parents who can afford to give them the experiences that look good on such an essay (educational trips to Africa, lessons in two…

> The central example of this is college admissions statements. Some kids have the advantage both of parents who can afford to give them the experiences that look good on such an essay (educational trips to Africa, lessons in two musical instruments, one-on-one golf coaching, that kind of thing), and who can hire tutors to "support" them in writing the essay. This is an absolute disgrace. And then these are the peopl…

> This is an absolute disgrace. And then these are the people who lecture you on "inclusion".

Are they? Is there any evidence of correlation between these two groups of people?

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

#594

Post by arnaudsm »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #555

I don't understand most of the comments here. I couldn't cheat in high school because we couldn't use our phones during class. Not for worksheets nor quizzes and especially not exams whether they be multiple choice, oral, or essays. Yet the top threads here act like we need a whole refactor of schooling, many people suggesting we rely on viva voce exams and proctored exams. What exactly do you think that's solving ov…

I've seen hundred of college students successfully cheat with mobile phones in class.

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

#595

Post by washadjeffmad »

jeroenhd wrote: post #519
washadjeffmad wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41882421 My comment from a few days ago. The origin was a conversation with a girl who said she'd been pulled into a professor's office and told she was going to be reported to whatever her university's equivalent of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity is over using AI - a matter of academic honesty. The professor made it clear in the syllabus that "no AI" was allowed to be use…

In my opinion, it strongly depends on what Grammarly is being used for. For a physics paper, that's not a huge problem. For an English writing assignment, that's cheating. Banning AI tools like Grammarly for both is probably the best solution as your physics paper now becomes an extra training exercise for your English paper. Writing essays isn't just about your ideas. It's also a tool to teach communication skills.…

I agree, but that needs to be clearly communicated by the faculty in their syllabi, in alignment with college and university understanding. I think it's an under-discussed topic.

Saying "AI" becomes meaningless if we're all using it to mean different things. If I use computer vision to perform cell counts, or if an ESL student uses deepl to help translate a difficult to express idea, would we be in breach of student conduct?

The real answer is "ask your professor first", but with how second nature many of these tools have become in P12 education, it may not occur to students that it might be necessary to ask.

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

#596

Post by skhunted »

_fat_santa wrote: post #576
skhunted wrote: post #491

I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating. The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. B…

I remember taking a math class in college and the professor had a very unique way of dealing with cheating. He let us use our books, notes, and "any calculator capability" from our TI-84's. His rationale is that students will try to use these tricks anyways so just let them and then update the test to be "immune" from these advantages. Before every test he mentioned that we could use all those tools but always said "…

I’ve done this but then you end up with students who are not used to “thinking”. They do bad on the test. Now I’m known as a hard teacher. Now people avoid my classes. Administration hounds me for having s low passing rate. I need a job. I now give easy tests.

The real issue as I see it is that no one wants to face the reality that far too many incapable, incurious people are going to college. So I pretend to give real tests and pretend to give real grades and students feel good about themselves and my classes fill.

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

#597

Post by 4star3star »

mrweasel wrote: post #184

The part that annoys me is that students apparently have no right to be told why the AI flagged their work. For any process where an computer is allowed to judge people, where should be a rule in place that demands that the algorithm be able explains EXACTLY why it flagged this person. Now this would effectively kill off the current AI powered solution, because they have no way of explaining, or even understanding, w…

Totally agree. "Your paper is flagged for plagiarism. You get a zero." "But I swear I wrote that 100% on my own. What does it say I plagiarized?" "It doesn't say, but you still get a zero."

In what world is this fair? Our court systems certainly don't operate under these assumptions.

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

#598

Post by skhunted »

thesuitonym wrote: post #582
skhunted wrote: post #491

I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating. The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. B…

> Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. This is because 100-200 level math courses are not about teaching anything, but about filtering out students who can't do the work. Once you get past that level students have already formed bad habits and so still only do what it takes to pass. I don't know how to fix it, I don't know if it CAN be fixed.

This is because 100-200 level math courses are not about teaching anything, but about filtering out students who can't do the work.

This is 100% incorrect.

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

#599

Post by aftbit »

I haven't seen this discussed as much as I expected - is this even possible? Can a tool be built to - in general - determine if an LLM was used to generate text? Can a human even do it in every case?

_Maybe_ you can detect default ChatGPT-3.5 responses. But if a student does a bit of mucking around with fine-tunes on local llama or uses a less-common public model, can you still tell?

I have a similar question for AI art detectors. Can it actually work? Maybe it works for Midjourney or whatever, but the parameter space of both hand-drawn (on a computer) art and brush-stroke generating models like NeuBE must overlap enough that you could never be sure in a substantial number of cases.

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

#600

Post by arnaudsm »

Akranazon wrote: post #572

The LLMs de-value the viability of homework, and assignments consisting of at-home busywork. As an alternative, teachers will have to put more emphasis on proctored exams. I say good riddance, that's exactly how it should be. At-home busywork is a scourge on especially K-12 students. Yet, every teacher has been loading their students up with homework, because that's their idea of what a "good teacher" is supposed to…

Homework caused major educational inequalities anyway, I'm not sad to see it disappear.
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