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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

#461

Post by Balgair »

hresvelgr wrote: post #454

I think the irony here is that LLMs are the ultimate tool for auto-didacts and people who love to learn independently, bar none. Using them to cheat is such a profound waste to me. I've beeen able to accelerate my learning thanks to LLMs, and it saddens me that the potential for this kind of personal enrichment is lost on most.

Brown's PLME program is famous for getting you into med school.

And med schools are quite focused on grades.

Same goes for Law Schools, which, again, Brown is an outlier for JDs.

Look, the professor here is right. But he's living in a different time. The students are under the gun here and are responding to their incentives. The prof's gripe should not be with the students but with the AMA or the Bar associations, ultimately.

Essentially, the system is sick, the kids and prof are caught in the middle of it. Don't fight each other, fight the power.

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

#462

Post by z0ltan »

walrus01 wrote: post #262
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quite a bit older than you, old enough that I remember learning to touch type in elementary school on Apple IIe and IIgs desktop computers. It's not reasonable these days to expect people to hand write a 4, 6, 8 page length essay on paper and pen with a finite time limit in a classroom. Being able to edit and revise things in a word processor type interface is an essential part of writing an academic paper. Addit…

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

#463

Post by z0ltan »

ant6n wrote: post #106
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

#464

Post by rahimnathwani »

onion2k wrote: post #435
sgustard wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"best not to blame the students" There are dozens for every one who didn't get the opportunity to attend an Ivy. The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. I'll note as a hiring manager the college degree won't be worth shit unless the school can show their students have any integrity.

The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. Universities need to stay ahead of how people actually work. Framing the use of AI as 'cheating' gives a university a reputation that it isn't keeping up with industry, which has a wildly negative impact on admissions. You can't expel people for 'working like they do in the real world'.

You're conflating two different types of work, which each have a different purpose:

- making a change to your own mind and/or body (studying math, lifting weights)

- making a change to the world (optimizing ad placement, operating a forklift truck)

Do you think gyms should allow people to lift heavy weights with forklift trucks, so that they can work like they do in the real world?

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

#465

Post by watwut »

harry8 wrote: post #248
watwut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his generation, only cheating cyclists could stay in teams. He was the one who created the situation, but in fact, cyclists had two choices - stop being cyclist or cheat.

You yourself are on drugs if you think Lance Armstrong "created the situation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#D... Note the quantity that actually got caught and with enough evidence. Lance won it 6 times without getting caught. Looking at it systematically there's no way all of the top finishers were not taking drugs (how else could they compete with the world's best who were? The advant…

He was literal ring leader and innovator of doping. He was also openly forcing others into doping. That is not controversial statement, but result of subsequent reports.

> Lance won it 6 times without getting caught.

Yes, he was doping for years before being caught. He found novel ways how to do it.

> reality lets rather a lot of people off the hook with a convenient scapegoat.

No it does not. It just guves credit to where it is due. But we also have track record of Lance scapegoating others.

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

#466

Post by bee_rider »

annzabelle wrote: post #450
bee_rider wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “take home open book exam, good luck,” followed by evil laughter, is mostly a math department thing.

I remember having 7 day take home open book open internet exams in my math classes in college. We were also expected to typeset all our answers. Those exams probably took the median student 30 hours and had a median score of 50% including partial credit. Sad to think current students will never get that experience, because a chatbot could write something good enough to get a 50% in 10 minutes, for many of those class…

True… but, we’re in a transitional stage still. Eventually, if these models are really going to be such a big deal, then the workflows of real mathematicians will probably involve using them very effectively. Eventually the generation that grew up using the things will become professors, and they’ll be good enough at using the things to ask a question that’s still hard with an LLM.

Well, either that will happen, or the pace of advancement will increase faster than humans can adapt. That’s the singularity, right? I don’t think we’re that close to it.

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

#467

Post by rahimnathwani »

yiyingzhang wrote: post #199

As a university professor, I honestly don't understand the point of grading. Who will look at and care about grades? Likely company HR. But then why should we (professors) do the screening for companies for free? Also, grades have long been inflated to a point we might as well just give everyone an A and let companies figure out how to select people.

Your employer (the university) sells a credential (diploma and transcript) that your customer (the student) uses to help them get a job.

You are not doing it for free. Grading is part of what UC gets for the $250k+ they pay a professor in salary and benefits.

HR departments will use whatever signals exist. If smart people tend to have college degrees, they'll use that as a filter. If smart people tend to have gone to a certain set if universities, they'll use that list as a filter. If colleges hand out transcripts with grades, and smart people tend to have better grades, they'll ask for transcripts.

HR departments didn't invent grades or transcripts.

I agree with your final sentence. The signal in grades (and even graduation) has been greatly diminished (even at brand name universities).

If you want to improve that situation a good step you can take right now is add your name to this open letter from UC STEM faculty: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwvDywR-CAt3t_U3Aw...

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

#468

Post by onion2k »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #464
onion2k wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. Universities need to stay ahead of how people actually work. Framing the use of AI as 'cheating' gives a university a reputation that it isn't keeping up with industry, which has a wildly negative impact on admissions. You can't expel people for 'working like they do in the real world'.

You're conflating two different types of work, which each have a different purpose: - making a change to your own mind and/or body (studying math, lifting weights) - making a change to the world (optimizing ad placement, operating a forklift truck) Do you think gyms should allow people to lift heavy weights with forklift trucks, so that they can work like they do in the real world?

That's an amusing analogy, but it's conflating university as a purely academic pursuit (learn these things in order to know the things) with university as vocational training (learn these things so you can get a job.) As people have to pay for their degree through loans now, people see it as a means to get the career they want. It's not learning any more. It's training.

So, to continue the analogy, a degree is the equivalent of a forklift truck license, and people do want to drive their forklift truck to the gym. Because they're paying to be able to do that.

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

#469

Post by eviks »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148
ant6n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A lecture hall full of click-click-click isn't going to be conducive to concentrating on a test.

Change the keyboards to silent. Allow headphones. Still beats the collective waste of forcing to hand write

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

#470

Post by nunez »

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…

Many schools have proctored and internet-restricted testing centers. They are mostly for students with IEPs though.
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