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College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

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Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#51

Post by djmips »

vunderba wrote: post #26
tejtm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arms race.... oh look there is a llm trained on key loggers to spew slop at your personally predicted error rate; bonus if it identifies to USB as keyboard.

You should look up the history of the Loebner Prize [1]. There’s a shocking amount of technological development in some chatbots that went toward simulating mistakes and typing patterns to make them seem more human-like. In some of the later Loebner competitions, when text was transmitted to the human character by character, the bot would even simulate typos followed by backspacing on screen to make it look more real…

Wow it feels like the Loebner prize went away right at the dawn of the LLM. Is it correlated?

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#52

Post by eichin »

deepsun wrote: post #27
bee_rider wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things I don’t like about putting too much weight in the exams are: * It’s sort of unnecessarily high stakes for the students; a couple hours to determine your grade for many hours of studying. * It’s pretty artificial in general; in “real life” you have the ability to go around online and look for sources. This puts a pretty low ceiling on the level of complexity you can actually throw at them.

I think it's all about speed. In "real life" everything can be looked up, but exam optimizes to not even having to look it up. Then any research becomes much faster. Whether it's good or bad I don't know, I think US higher education focuses too much on ability to produce huge amounts of mediocre work, but that's the idea behind exams.

One of the reasons I've always encouraged software people to learn to touch type has nothing to do with typing speed - it's about reducing/eliminating the cognitive load of typing, you want to be thinking in expressions (sentences) not letters. (The increase in effectiveness comes from not getting distracted by the mechanics of typing...)

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#53

Post by michaelt »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #17

If students cheat they hurt only themselves. Make sure they understand the consequences for cheating (missing out on learning) and that's about all you can do.

The thing is, when colleges don't test students' ability properly before issuing a credential, employers start testing job applicants' ability after they've received it.

And they'll do it with all the 'unnecessarily high stakes' and 'risk of unconscious bias' and 'not truly representative' problems that written exams have; and a bunch of extra problems too.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#54

Post by PebblesRox »

gorgoiler wrote: post #18

I’m confused about too many things being measured at once. Is Phelps banning AI to ensure her students are fit to pass terminal examination? And doing so to ensure that her class has a good pass rate, proving she is a good teacher and can keep her job? What if her cohort are particularly dumb? Is she incentivized to make it easy to pass her classes to get that A you paid so much for? Or hard or make that A worth some…

My impression was she just brings the typewriters into class as a one-day novelty thing per course, not that it becomes the norm for the whole semester. The goal is to give the students a taste of what the old-fashioned way is like, to get them thinking about it.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#55

Post by nsyne »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #30

When I did my Computer Science degree the vast majority of courses were 50% final, 30% midterm - even programming exams were hand written, proctored by TAs in class or in the gymnasium - assignments/labs/projects were a small part of your grade but if you didn’t do them the likelihood you’d pass the term exams was pretty darn low. We already had AI proof education.

I personally dislike placing a heavy emphasis on exams. Assignments/projects have been consistently the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the courses I've taken so far in university.

It's a shame that they are also way more susceptible to cheating with AI.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#56

Post by eichin »

gentleman11 wrote: post #14

I had a typewriter growing up and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. I was amazed by it and tried writing several stories. Eventually my dad bought me a crappy old computer that was only really good for writing, and that was cool too. I loved that thing. It was small too, with an integrated monitor and keyboard, so it didn't take over the whole desk where I still used pencil and paper often Imagine being a…

There's an entire industry of "distraction free writing devices" based mostly on that nostalgia/yearning (not to say that it isn't effective, but the effectiveness is not actually being measured :-)

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#57

Post by hackable_sand »

llbbdd wrote: post #37

Might be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but college was made worthless for most degrees as soon as the internet got popular and silly performative shit like this is the death knell. College is about learning how to work in an industry. I'd predict an uptick in trade schools and other hands-on work like medicine, and a continuing downturn in so-called formal education for anything white-collar, programming inclu…

> College is about learning how to work in an industry.

Oh

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#58

Post by vunderba »

djmips wrote: post #51
vunderba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should look up the history of the Loebner Prize [1]. There’s a shocking amount of technological development in some chatbots that went toward simulating mistakes and typing patterns to make them seem more human-like. In some of the later Loebner competitions, when text was transmitted to the human character by character, the bot would even simulate typos followed by backspacing on screen to make it look more real…

Wow it feels like the Loebner prize went away right at the dawn of the LLM. Is it correlated?

Yeah I definitely think LLMs contributed to its demise. To be honest, nobody in academic AI circles took it very seriously, because it kind of devolved into a contest over who could create the most convincing illusion of intelligence.

Participants spent more time polishing up the natural language parsing aspects in conjunction with pre‑programming elaborate backstories for their chatbot's bios among other psychological tricks. In the end, the whole competition was more impressive as a social engineering exercise, since the real goal kinda became: how can I trick people into thinking my chatbot is a human?

But reading through some of the previous competition chatbot transcripts still makes for fascinating reading.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#59

Post by dublinstats »

bee_rider wrote: post #15
zamadatix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always preferred the "you get some grades along the way to gauge your progress but the lion's share of the weight went to the proctored exams" method unless the lion's share of the normal work was also proctored anyways (at which point it doesn't really matter how it's done). The reason was less for myself and more because anything group related suddenly shot up in quality when the other individual work classmates…

The things I don’t like about putting too much weight in the exams are: * It’s sort of unnecessarily high stakes for the students; a couple hours to determine your grade for many hours of studying. * It’s pretty artificial in general; in “real life” you have the ability to go around online and look for sources. This puts a pretty low ceiling on the level of complexity you can actually throw at them.

High stakes artificial exams can help prepare you for artificial stakes at job interviews where you need to crank out a working solution in 30 mins with jet lag and someone looking over your shoulder

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#60

Post by recursivedoubts »

acbart wrote: post #31
recursivedoubts wrote: post #2

I used to make my classes 60-80% project work, 40-80% quizzes all online. I now do 50% project work, 50% in person quizzes, pencil on paper on page of notes. I'm increasingly going to paper-driven workflows as well, becoming an expert with the department printer, printing computer science papers for students to read and annotate in class, etc. Ironically, the traditional bureaucratic lag in university might actually…

So at 50%, someone who uses AI to get 100% of the homework grade will earn a D (sometimes passing) if they can get at least a 20% on your quizzes, and a C (always passing) if they get at least a 40%. Did you make your exam so difficult that students who truly didn't learn the material earn less than 20-40%? Because if it was, say, multiple choice questions with four possible answers, then you can expect them to earn…

My quizzes are written responses, psuedocode and annotating code.
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