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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

#481

Post by gameman144 »

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 can't expel people for 'working like they do in the real world'.

You totally can, though. In the real world if I can't remember something, I might look it up in a textbook. Closed-book tests have historically been a totally accepted practice, though, and getting caught bringing notecards with textbook info secretly into a closed-book test would absolutely bring about disciplinary action.

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

#482

Post by linzhangrun »

theamk wrote: post #421
linzhangrun wrote: post #314

AI has drastically reduced the cost and concealment for cheating, even in offline exams. A single person can easily do that using glasses with a micro-camera & rice-sized earbuds, and almost impossible to be caught.

Not really, bluetooth/wifi detectors are absolutely a thing, and emissions from camera in glasses are easily detectable by the right equipment. This equipment is not very common today, but if the smart glasses become popular, then universities (or proctoring centers) will get it. And if they don't become common, then some fraction of cheating is acceptable, as long it's not too high. After all, one could do micro-cam…

At least for now, these only exist in a very few number of high level national exams (at least in China). The proctoring level in university is basically like a decoration in front of these.

Another point is that finding and using a capable human accomplice costs much more, with much more risk than asking AI.

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

#483

Post by lmf4lol »

mbreese wrote: post #427
throwaway152321 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would struggle to do it by hand. If you did it before then, barring physical limitations which have occurred since then, you would struggle for a short while and then you would be fine. I also did coursework purely on paper, got out of practice, and then once my kids were in school got back into the habit of handwriting. I can even write cursive again. Cursive makes it much easier on the hand and wrist. There's a…

> barring physical limitations I think you're missing the point. This is a physical limitation. People don't write as much as they used to. I used to be able to write for hours, taking notes, writing papers, etc... Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me. Yes, we all "could" re-learn this skill, but how many people wil…

> Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me.

Are you using a fountain pen, writing cursive and do you take care to hold it properly? Those three things fixed all my cramps

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

#484

Post by underdeserver »

onion2k wrote: post #468
rahimnathwani wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eq…

Undergraduate degrees are not vocational in any of the leading universities in any field. They are sometimes a prerequisite to vocational training, but aren't one in and of themselves.

There's a pretty good reason for that - the base assumption is that training in fundamentals, methods and ways of thinking is something you won't get anywhere else.

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

#485

Post by Blahah »

janalsncm wrote: post #265
goldenarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on the reward function. Should society reward credentials or skill?

Students aren’t optimizing for what is best for society. They are optimizing for themselves, which almost always means getting a job. The credential is a prerequisite but skills are a differentiator. Problem is, not all skills are equal. Amazon isn’t going to ask you about your opinions on The Illiad , they are going to check if you can write an efficient algorithm to rob houses or merge sorted linked lists.

The system design questions are (at least):

1. What is this education intended to optimise for?

2. What are the various participants (including students) optimising for?

3. What aligns 1 and 2?

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

#486

Post by argee »

sixtram wrote: post #479
aabajian wrote: post #474

The last take-home test I did was for EE364a: Convex Optimization. It was a 24 hour test, and I had a cold. I booked a hotel room as my apartment didn't have air conditioning. It was brutal. I got most of the programming questions correct, but only a few of the proofs. The average of the class on this test (and most every other assignment) was 80%+. I got an A- overall in that class. Perhaps this class isn't too hard…

Is it really cheating if you work hard and memorize all the questions? That's basically learning.

Almost sounds like a bunch of people crowdsourced a better textbook than was otherwise available to them. If your database is truly "secret" how are people going to add to it or benefit from it?

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

#487

Post by duskdozer »

rsanek wrote: post #256
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you can't concentrate while people are working on computers near you, I don't think you'll do well in any workplace that is based around knowledge work.

We're no longer limited by this and can avoid the productivity drag by universally permitting remote work.

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

#488

Post by SkiFire13 »

fn-mote wrote: post #361
rtpg wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to do "write code on paper" stuff as part of french engineering school entrance exams. It's fine (tho annoying when you lose points to "typos"), but it limits what kinds of problems you can reasonably put on the exam. You'll definitely lean a bit more into theoretical stuff than practicals. Which is fine for some courses, I think a bit less interesting in other courses. Remember, the hand written code is also h…

> we've booked the computer room, you don't have internet How practical is this? 1. Is your institution able to provide this support? 2. Do you believe you are able to supervise the room well enough that students will be caught if they cheat? (Eg, bring a phone and look up answers.)

I graduated from a not so incredible university and we had multiple such rooms. Teaching assistants and some tutors helped supervising the exams and it wasn't easy to cheat without getting caught.

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

#489

Post by crazylogger »

markus_zhang wrote: post #169
redwall_hp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's news to me that they weren't already. My exams were all in person and on paper in the early 2020s, and even my physics homework was a "do it on engineering paper and drop it in a mail slot" affair. The professors would forbid computers and phones during lectures and would stop to shame anyone who thought they were being sneaky. Computer Science classes were all on paper for exams, and low level ones did the old…

IMO many CS classes should be lab based already, except the theory heavy ones. I still wonder why MIT needs to test students of OS courses on paper when the labs cover a lot of the ground. If I can do well in the labs I wouldn’t bother to memorize stuffs for the exams.

Students will just one-shot whatever lab problems professor comes up with using Claude Code.

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

#490

Post by jay_kyburz »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #142
rsa4046 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After retiring at 65 from a university teaching and research science career (all pre-AI), I went back to teaching, but this time teaching high school science, mostly AP STEM courses at an A-ranked public high school. The cheating/AI problem is now a crisis greater than COVID. My experience: very few students in advanced and AP classes do not cheat — largely for the reasons given above — and it takes enormous resource…

My daughter just finished her Grade 11 finals in Canada. They were done on locked down school Chromebooks, which should be enough to prevent cheating by all but the most dedicated.

On my kids chrome books, the actual AI chatbot websites are blocked, but the kids just ask follow up questions to the AI response in a normal google search.
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