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Implications of AI to schools

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Re: Implications of AI to schools

#211

Post by trashtester »

edwcross wrote: post #166
ubj wrote: post #7

One of my students recently came to me with an interesting dilemma. His sister had written (without AI tools) an essay for another class, and her teacher told her that an "AI detection tool" had classified it as having been written by AI with "100% confidence". He was going to give her a zero on the assignment. Putting aside the ludicrous confidence score, the student's question was: how could his sister convince the…

Always stunned by how much teachers can accuse without proof and invert the "innocent until proven guilty". Honestly, students should have a course in "how the justice system works" (or at least should work). So should the teachers. Student unions and similar entities should exist and be ready to intervene to help students in such situations. This is nothing new, AI will just make this happen more often, revealing ho…

Student unions tend to focus on all sorts of other issues, I wouldn't trust them to handle cases like this.

The only way to reliably prevent the use of AI tools without punishing innocent students is to monitor the students while they work.

Schools can either do that by having essays be written on premise, either by hand or by using computers managed by the school.

But students that are worried that they will be targeted can also do this themselves, by setting up their phone to film them while working.

And if they do this, and the teacher tries to punish someone who can prove they wrote the essay themselves, either the teacher or the school should hopefully learn that such tools can't be trusted.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#212

Post by Huppie »

zkmon wrote: post #205

It's not the students. It's the teachers and school using AI first, and publicly. Why does he talk about only students using AI? Also, just like how calculators are allowed in the exam halls, why not allow AI usage in exams? In real-life job you are not going to avoid use of calculator or AI. So why test people in a different context? I think the tests should focus on the skills in using calculator and AI.

I real life if someone with an administrative job would jot 50 * 3,000 in a calculator and not notice the answer 1,500,000 is wrong (a typo) I will consider them most definitely at fault. Similarly I know some structural engineers who will notice something went wrong with the input if an answer is not within a given range.

A calculator can be used to do things you know how to do _faster_ imho but in most jobs it still requires you to at least somewhat understand what is happening under the hood. The same principle applies to using LLMs at work imho. You can use it to do stuff you know how to do faster but if you don't understand the material there's no way you can evaluate the LLMs answer and you will be at fault when there's AI slop in your output.

eta: Maybe it would be possible to design labs with LLM's in such a way that you teach them how to evaluate the LLM's answer? This would require them to have knowledge of the underlying topic. That's probably possible with specialized tools / LLM prompts but is not going to help against them using a generic LLM like ChatGPT or a cheating tool that feeds into a generic model.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#213

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #203
ubj wrote: post #7

One of my students recently came to me with an interesting dilemma. His sister had written (without AI tools) an essay for another class, and her teacher told her that an "AI detection tool" had classified it as having been written by AI with "100% confidence". He was going to give her a zero on the assignment. Putting aside the ludicrous confidence score, the student's question was: how could his sister convince the…

I wouldn't mind seeing education return to its roots of being about learning instead of credentialization. In an age where having a degree is increasingly meaningless in part due to many places simply becoming thinly veiled diploma treadmills (which are somehow nonetheless accredited), this is probably more important than ever. This is doubly so if the AI impact extremists end up being correct. So why is the issue yo…

> This is one of the very few places I think big tech in the US has done a great job. Coding interviews can be justifiably critiqued in many ways, but it's still a much better system than raw credentialization.

Just so we're clear, the coding tests are in addition to credentialisation. I'll never forget when I worked at Big Tech (from Ireland) and I would constantly hear recruiters talk about the OK school list (basically the Ivy league). Additionally, I remember having to check the University a candidate had attended before she had an interview with one of our directors.

He was fine with her, because she had gone to Oxford. Honestly, I'm surprised that I was able to get hired there given all this nonsense.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#214

Post by trashtester »

inerte wrote: post #76
rkagerer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess you have to videotape or screen-record yourself writing it. Oh what a world we've created :-S.

You mean you'll prompt Sora to create a video of you writing the essay :)

For now, Sora will not be able to actually produce all the text, I think. Maybe next year.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#215

Post by vanviegen »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #192
ecshafer wrote: post #11

In my CS undergrad I had Doug Lea as a professor, really fantastic professor (best teacher I have ever had, bar none). He had a really novel way to handle homework hand ins, you had to demo the project. So you got him to sit down with you, you ran the code, he would ask you to put some inputs in (that were highly likely to be edge cases to break it). Once that was sufficient, he would ask you how you did different th…

The TL:DR of every "AI vs Schools, what should teachers do?" article boils down to exactly this: Talk with the students 1-1. You can fake an essay, you can't fake a conversation about the topic at hand.

Or just do some work/exam in a controlled setting.

Talking to students in order to gauge their understanding is not as easy or reliable as some people make it out to be.

There are many students who are basically just useless when required to answer on the spot, some of whom likely to score top-of-the-class given an assignment and time to work on it alone (in a proctored setting).

And then there are students whom are very likable and swift to pick up on subtle signals the examiners might be giving of, and constantly adjusting course accordingly.

Grading objectively is extremely hard when doing oral exams. Especially when when you're doing them back-to-back for an entire workday, which is quite likely to happen if most examination is to be done in this way.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#216

Post by AmbroseBierce »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #192
ecshafer wrote: post #11

In my CS undergrad I had Doug Lea as a professor, really fantastic professor (best teacher I have ever had, bar none). He had a really novel way to handle homework hand ins, you had to demo the project. So you got him to sit down with you, you ran the code, he would ask you to put some inputs in (that were highly likely to be edge cases to break it). Once that was sufficient, he would ask you how you did different th…

The TL:DR of every "AI vs Schools, what should teachers do?" article boils down to exactly this: Talk with the students 1-1. You can fake an essay, you can't fake a conversation about the topic at hand.

Not yet but we are getting close to be able to do it, tiny microphone, tiny earpiece, zero AI lag, I give it less than 10 years before it's trivial for anyone.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#217

Post by vanviegen »

solomonb wrote: post #127

In college I had a professor assign us to write a 100% plagiarized paper. You had to highlight every word in a color associated with the source. You couldn't plagiarize more then one sequential sentence from a single source. It ended up being harder then writing an ordinary paper but taught us all a ton about citation and originality. It was a really cool exercise. I imagine something similar could be done to teach s…

That's awesome!

Contemporary alternative: Copy/paste an essay entirely from LLM output, but make sure none of the information contained checks out. One would want to use an older model for this. :-)

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#218

Post by oblio »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #213
somenameforme wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't mind seeing education return to its roots of being about learning instead of credentialization. In an age where having a degree is increasingly meaningless in part due to many places simply becoming thinly veiled diploma treadmills (which are somehow nonetheless accredited), this is probably more important than ever. This is doubly so if the AI impact extremists end up being correct. So why is the issue yo…

> This is one of the very few places I think big tech in the US has done a great job. Coding interviews can be justifiably critiqued in many ways, but it's still a much better system than raw credentialization. Just so we're clear, the coding tests are in addition to credentialisation. I'll never forget when I worked at Big Tech (from Ireland) and I would constantly hear recruiters talk about the OK school list (basi…

If anything, it will get worse. There was a deficit of tech workers, from now on, there will be an excess. Which means that differentiators will be even more important.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#219

Post by oblio »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #206
throwaway31131 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hinted to it but at what point are you basically giving individual oral exams to the entire class for every assignment? There are surveys where 80% of high school students self report using AI on assignments. I guess we could go back to giving exams soviet Russia style where you get a couple of questions that you have to answer orally in front of the whole class and that’s your grade. Not fun…

Sounds good! Why not?

Stress levels for introverts.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#220

Post by oblio »

jancsika wrote: post #77
ubj wrote: post #7

One of my students recently came to me with an interesting dilemma. His sister had written (without AI tools) an essay for another class, and her teacher told her that an "AI detection tool" had classified it as having been written by AI with "100% confidence". He was going to give her a zero on the assignment. Putting aside the ludicrous confidence score, the student's question was: how could his sister convince the…

Seems like this could be practically addressed by teachers adopting the TSA's randomized screening. That is, roll some dice to figure out which student on a given assignment comes in either for the oral discussion or-- perhaps in higher grades-- to write the essay in realtime. It should be way easier than TSA's goal because you don't need to stop cheaters. You instead just need to ensure that you seed skills into a m…

> Of course, this all assumes an effective pre-K reading program in the first place.

Pre-k is preschool aka kindergarten?

Is this really needed? It's really stressful for kids under 5 or 6 to read and is there a big enough statistical difference in outcome enough to rob them of some of their early youth?

I started reading around 6 years old and I was probably ahead of the vast majority of kids within 6 months.

Kids starting around 6 years old have much better focus and also greatly enhanced mental abilities overall.

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