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Implications of AI to schools

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Re: Implications of AI to schools

#261

Post by 4pkjai »

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…

When I was a university student in 2009 a lecturer accused me of plagiarising a c++ win32 project I submitted.

It turned out he ran it through a plagiarism detector and multiple lines of code where identical to lines in their database.

It was very silly because there’s a lot of boiler plate code in win32 projects

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#262

Post by bluenose69 »

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…

The oral discussion does not scale well in large classes. The solution is to stop using essays for evaluation, relying on (supervised) examinations instead.

Of course, there will be complaints from many students. However, as a prof for decades, I can say that some will prefer an exam-based solution. This includes the students who are working their way through university and don't have much time for busy-work, along with students who write their essays themselves and get lower grades than those who do not.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#263

Post by Borealid »

teekert wrote: post #251
Borealid wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible the same problems that cause you to write less-readable words also lead you to choose poor AI outputs? If no, why not? Personally I would rather read a human's output than their selection of machine outputs.

I guess you've never read the English of a Dutch person ;) During my PhD defense I was told I "should have checked with a native speaker." Pre-LLMs, I'd go to my American colleague and she'd mostly remove text and rewrite some bit to make texts much more readable. Nowadays, often I put my text into the LLM, and say: Make more concise, include all original points, don't be enthusiastic, use business style writing. And…

I am telling you my own preferences, as a native speaker of English. I would rather read my coworkers' original output in their voice than read someone else's writing (including a machine edit of their own text).

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#264

Post by joshvm »

throwaway31131 wrote: post #196
lll-o-lll wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My only suggestion was for her to ask the teacher to sit down with her and have a 30-60 minute oral discussion on the essay so she could demonstrate she in fact knew the material. This sounds like, a good solution? It’s the exception case, so shouldn’t be constant (false positives), although I suppose this fails if everyone cheats and everyone wants to claim innocence.

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…

You don't need oral exams, you just need in-person. So a written test in the classroom, under exam conditions, would suffice.

In this particular resolution example, it would be quicker to ask the student some probing questions versus have them re-write (and potentially regurgitate) an essay.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#265

Post by fhgh2 »

ghaff wrote: post #121
mercacona wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, it's easy to shortcut AI plagiarism, but you need time. In most of the universities around the world (online universities especially), the number of students is way too big, while professors get more and more pressure on publishing and bureaucracy.

It's not even about plagiarism. But, sure, 1:1 or even 1:few instruction is great but even at elite schools is not really very practical. I went to what's considered a very good engineering school and classes with hundreds of students was pretty normal.

In some university systems it seems to be possible (I'm thinking of the khôlle system in France), so I don't see how the much better funded US system would not be able to do it.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#266

Post by fhgh2 »

nicce wrote: post #250
11101010001100 wrote: post #102

As a teacher, I try to keep an open mind, but consistently I can find out in 5 minutes of talking to a student if they understand the material. I might just go all in for the oral exams.

Oral exams don't scale well if there are +100 students and a lot of assignments. The main pain point.

Do fewer graded assignments then

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#267

Post by rrrobert »

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…

My experience with big tech has been the polar opposite - nobody has ever cared and I've never tried to hide it either. Which one was it if you don't mind me asking?

I'm a drop out (didn't finish BSc) from a no name Northern European university and I've worked at or gotten offers from:

- Meta

- Amazon

- Google

- Microsoft

- Uber

- xAI

+ some unicorns that compete with FAANG+ locally.

I didn't include some others that have reached out for interviews which I declined at the time. The lack of a degree has literally never come up for me.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#268

Post by gortok »

> The verification ability is especially important in the case of AI, which is presently a lot more fallible in a great variety of ways compared to calculators.

Um. yea. This is the first time a non-deterministic technology has achieved mass adoption for every day use. Despite repeated warnings (which are not even close to the tenor of warnings they should broadcast), folks don’t understand that AI will likely hallucinate some or all of their answer.

A calculator will not, and even the closest aspect of buggy behavior for a calculator (exploring the fringes of floating point numbers, for example) is light years away from the hallucination of generated AI for general, every day questions.

The mass exuberance over generative AI has been clouding folks from the very real effects of over-adoption or AI, and we aren’t going to see the full impact of that for some time, and when we do, folks are going to ask questions like “how were we so dumb?” And of course the answer will be “no one saw this coming.”

My spouse is an educator with nearly 20 years in the industry, and even her school has adopted AI. It’s shocking how quickly it has taken hold, even in otherwise lagging adoption segments. Her school finally went “1-1” with devices in 2020, just prior to COVID.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#270

Post by andrepd »

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…

That's an absolutely dreadful exam. Would you mind explaining the point you wanted to make with it?
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