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Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

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Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#101

Post by gchallen »

tropdrop wrote: post #83
gchallen wrote: post #69

> He has conclusive evidence that at least 50 students cheated on the March midterm exam, making it the biggest known scandal at Brown and in the entire Ivy League I'd like a citation for this being the "biggest known scandal" in the "entire Ivy League". Frequently such situations are kept somewhat quiet, for a variety of reasons. But fifty students is not a large number in courses that can enroll hundreds or up to a…

Ivy League classes usually aren't as large as their state school counterparts. At most you might get around a hundred students in a large lecture course; this is rare by design. You can crunch the numbers on this to verify for yourself – most of these have a population of 6000 undergrads or so. 1/6 of all of the undergraduates need to take a single course for your "up to a thousand" to be true. I agree that a citatio…

Harvard's larger courses enroll over 500 students. These are also introductory courses where you're most likely to see large cheating instances.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#102

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

krackers wrote: post #74
cherryteastain wrote: post #37

His research is in Game Theory. He should have realized that, in a situation where all competitors are (possibly) using LLMs, the game theoretic optimal choice is to use LLMs.

Game Theory seems sort of useless in the real world because people are not rational players, and the real challenge is in getting an accurate model of their behavior. The honor system would work probably fine in a tiny close-knit liberal arts college, while it would obviously wouldn't in a place where the degree itself is the target.

Game theory seemed kind of useful when the US was negotiating nuclear weapons control with the Soviets. It allowed successful negotiations in an extremely low trust situation.

Also, your own example is an application of game theory; you've basically stated a 'prisoner's dilemma' problem. You state that in a high trust society, most people will choose cooperation, while in a low trust society, most people will defect.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#103

Post by lokar »

tty456 wrote: post #78

"take home, closed book" This is a trap. I understand they've done this in the past, but profs are paranoid now. I don't believe he's 100% correct on each incident of fraud and he's going to ruin students [academic] lives because of it.

They did it to themselves. They probably even enrolled in the class because they thought they could cheat.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#104

Post by tiahura »

walrus01 wrote: post #80
recursivedoubts wrote: post #57

In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. I have written an article on how I have adjusted my classes to the situation: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/ Ironically, I think the AI era may make university degrees a better signal of the intellectual abilities of students due to the presence of pre-computer infrastructure like large lecture halls, industrial-scale copiers, etc.

> In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. Forcing hand written should really not be necessary. It would be very cheap in terms of old computing hardware to set up a test room with old desktop PCs that have wired only NICs (with a network connection that goes to a switch in the same room with no uplink, connected to a decent size laser printer only), running something like lubuntu and…

What's wrong with https://www.scantron.com/?

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#105

Post by davesque »

llbbdd wrote: post #93
davesque wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain?

See my other comment. I want my doctor/plumber/etc to be able to recall faster, type faster, work better under pressure. If you're better at those things you should get better grades and be paid more.

What if taking longer leads to a better result? Doesn't faster imply less thought?

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#106

Post by ant6n »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96
walrus01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. Forcing hand written should really not be necessary. It would be very cheap in terms of old computing hardware to set up a test room with old desktop PCs that have wired only NICs (with a network connection that goes to a switch in the same room with no uplink, connected to a decent size laser printer only), running something like lubuntu and…

I’m 30 and “we can’t do tests in paper” seems _insane_. Just how metastatic has ed tech been in what, 9 years since my undergrad?

I’m 40 and forcing students to do handwritten essays during tests has always been stupid. Typing is much faster, why bottleneck ideas by forcing handwriting?

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#107

Post by 1270018080 »

dgellow wrote: post #48
gedy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it feels like a Pyrrhic victory to not cheat, then get lower scores than the cheaters.

Are those exams a contest? Like, they will only take the best N percentiles? Because if not, you’re competing only against yourself and should ignore others’ grades

> Are those exams a contest?

Yes

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#108

Post by Waterluvian »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #57

In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. I have written an article on how I have adjusted my classes to the situation: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/ Ironically, I think the AI era may make university degrees a better signal of the intellectual abilities of students due to the presence of pre-computer infrastructure like large lecture halls, industrial-scale copiers, etc.

Being hand written would be silly theatre that excludes perfectly capable people (like me) who cannot sustain writing more than a few minutes.

Edit: I think we’re actually all agreeing. That a typed exam as an option is perfectly cromulent. I’m just saying the idea that it must be written is silly.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#109

Post by walrus01 »

wnevets wrote: post #92
walrus01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. Forcing hand written should really not be necessary. It would be very cheap in terms of old computing hardware to set up a test room with old desktop PCs that have wired only NICs (with a network connection that goes to a switch in the same room with no uplink, connected to a decent size laser printer only), running something like lubuntu and…

Can you fit a decent LLM on a thumbdrive?

Lots of ways to disable USB ports in bios and at the operating system level, additionally have a proctor watching to be sure everyone is in a word processor. Heck, ewaste grade computers can run a basic word processor, fill all USB ports except the mouse and keyboard with epoxy. Mount the computer in such a way the rear ports are inaccessible without it being very obvious what someone is doing and fill just the front ports (if they exist) with epoxy. Lots of ways to go about it.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#110

Post by glimshe »

Waterluvian wrote: post #108
recursivedoubts wrote: post #57

In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. I have written an article on how I have adjusted my classes to the situation: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/ Ironically, I think the AI era may make university degrees a better signal of the intellectual abilities of students due to the presence of pre-computer infrastructure like large lecture halls, industrial-scale copiers, etc.

Being hand written would be silly theatre that excludes perfectly capable people (like me) who cannot sustain writing more than a few minutes. Edit: I think we’re actually all agreeing. That a typed exam as an option is perfectly cromulent. I’m just saying the idea that it must be written is silly.

I don't want to dismiss your limitation, but it's better to create an acommodation for your particular case than to prevent the system from being implemented for everybody else.
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