Live data from Hacker News

Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

english.elpais.com

111–120 of 771 posts

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

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to do that.

Why not?

Do you let students bring their own keyboards? If not, does that disadvantage a Dvorak user? Or a Kinesis user? Or a non-US layout? Or a Mac user?

If you do let them bring their own keyboards, how sure are you that those are just dumb keyboards?

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

#112

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…

There should be no computer at all just give students a typewriter. It could prompt a resurgence of the typewriter :)

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

#113

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.

Gen Xer here: we coped with hand written exams just fine. Accommodations (extra time and/or a scribe) were available for those who needed them.

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

#114
post #51

These articles consistently fail to acknowledge students were cheating in large numbers prior to these AI tools being available. It was certainly not difficult to cheat at a "closed book" take home exam before.

Different magnitude of cheating altogether

Hmm I think one part every commenter is missing is that students have grown way more mercenary and cynical over the last 20 years. I was shocked in grad school that:

a) I got bullied into sharing my math homework so people could copy it, just like high school and college... but this was math grad school!

b) In 2011 I TAed a 4000-level course where the instructor left the solutions to the homework online (he wrote the book). I estimate 95% of students copied the solutions. It was only 5% of the grade and they paid for it on the exams. Still. Kind of stunning to see at U Waterloo - it was a continuous optimization course and most of them wanted to work in finance, yikes.

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

#115

These articles consistently fail to acknowledge students were cheating in large numbers prior to these AI tools being available. It was certainly not difficult to cheat at a "closed book" take home exam before.

I would argue the barrier to cheating has become lower just by virtue of how easy it is to do it now. You open an app and type your question. Rue if different from Brit where you had to basically have either a skill in cheating to find and adapt the right resources or you would have to have money to pay someone to do it for you. AI as the great equaliser I suppose.

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that’s the way it worked in undergrad for me. People would have hand written exams and the ones that had essay portions I’d do under more careful scrutiny in a different location using their hardware.

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gen Xer here: we coped with hand written exams just fine. Accommodations (extra time and/or a scribe) were available for those who needed them.

[deleted]

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

#118

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 think it's theatre, in the sense that it is effective for the advertised purpose (preempting AI-based cheating). But it seems to me like there are also plenty of ways to make reasonable accommodations for people who can't do a pen-and-paper exam, such as an offline computer.

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

#119

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.

Writing by hand for extended periods is a capability.

It was mandatory in an earlier age. Now it has become optional, but it could become mandatory again.

Presumably someone who is unable would get an accommodation of some kind.

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

#120

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…

> Forcing hand written should really not be necessary.

I do think it's necessary. And I felt unsure at first of how extremely strong I feel about this -- I think everybody should be able to write cursive, and even doctors should be able to write legibly, which ALL of them could learn in one single day, an afternoon, if they had to -- but then I did a simple search for "the benefits of writing by hand studies" and now I'm even more radical.

It's like PE or brushing your teeth. Nobody initially wants it, so we, knowing better, force them.

Post reply on HN