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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

#511

Post by close04 »

rtpg wrote: post #257
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 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…

GP is talking about every test being done on a computer presumably to avoid handwriting. Handwriting isn’t the usual “get with the times, grandpa” situation. It’s been proven again and again that writing by hand develops the brain and helps store that new knowledge better. It would be a disservice to the students to only use typing. Or TikTok shorts, or whatever is the tech of the day.

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

#512

Post by recursive »

epihelix wrote: post #347
metalcrow wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the benefit of cursive over standard writing?

What's the benefit of a HNSW KNN search over brute forcing it? Speed, with minimal loss of accuracy. Cursive vs printing (I'm guessing that's what you mean by "standard writing") is exactly the same, provided you can actually write in cursive. If you weren't taught in school, then sucks to be you, I guess? Modern pedagogy has a lot to answer for :(

I was taught cursive in elementary school along with everyone else. It was always slower than normal block letters for me. I always kind of resented having to learn it.

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

#513

Post by jauco »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #501
mbreese wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're doing a good job I think the problem is that the grader has to run your code in their head. That's a whole different problem.

They can OCR them and run them for real.

This would be HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) not OCR and HTR is a lot harder than OCR especially for modern scripts (i.e. student's scrawls). And at every error the reviewer now needs to check if it was due to an error in the code or due to a bad HTR somewhere in the code.

I'd say compared to just typing the code on a disconnected computer: Not worth it.

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

#514

Post by Espressosaurus »

derektank wrote: post #405
fn-mote wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but you know that professionals edit, right? It improves the quality of the product.

If the goal is to assess the ability of the student to produce a professional product, then why prevent them from using AI in the first place? The vast majority of professionals have access to AI nowadays? Most curricula should probably feature both forms of assessment, demonstrating your knowledge of the basics in a closed book assessment and your ability to produce high quality final products using all resources av…

It's not JUST about output, it's also about learning. The output is a way to measure the learning, it's not important of itself except as a reflection of the student's mastery of the curriculum.

You're thinking of the output as the goal rather than as the means to an end.

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

#515

Post by internet_points »

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.

> I stress to them that I admire the heroism of their generation in resisting these temptations.

> (I think older generations would do well to recognize this fact.)

That is so, so much better than the default mode of blaming kids for getting addicted to the systems their older generations developed.

https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html is another interesting perspective

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

#516

Post by dgellow »

ewild wrote: post #146
dgellow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's an incredibly privileged Pov to say it isn't a contest. These kids entire futures are impacted by these scores.

I’m literally asking. I haven’t said it’s not a contest

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

#517

Post by ninalanyon »

interroboink wrote: post #400
userbinator wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Do you care at all about the reputation of your university? I worked briefly in post-secondary CS education a long time ago, before academia turned into the ideological warzone it is today, and if I said such a thing, I would've probably lost my job. Also, grades have long been inflated Then stop inflating them. This is also what standardised testing is good for --- but no surprise, so many are against it becaus…

I know someone who went to Reed College, which has semi-famously not suffered from grade inflation[1]. They send your transcripts out with an explanatory note, so that the recipient will not view the graduate poorly when they see the numbers. Interestingly, at Reed, there is a low emphasis (or even anti-emphasis) on grades — a student has to go out of their way to obtain them. Instead, emphasis is on written feedback…

> They send your transcripts out with an explanatory note, so that the recipient will not view the graduate poorly when they see the numbers.

That's odd, I would expect any employer for whom the class of degree mattered to know the reputation of the university. For instance second from Oxford is probably going to be as desirable as a first from Oxford Brooks (formerly Oxford Poly).

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

#518

Post by internet_points »

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…

(It's mentioned as an idea in the bottom part of the htmx.org essay)

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

#519

Post by Escapado »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #180
Escapado wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that that is probably the lowest stake solution. Alternatively there are solutions like the safe exam browser which locks down the device quite well during the exam session. —- Disclosure: I run a small start up which offers teachers a platform to create and conduct digital exams and interfaces with the safe exam browser precisely because cheating is the number one complaint teachers I have spoken to have whe…

Sure, and those require kernel level access, strip privacy, and don’t run on all OS

Yup! That’s true and I wish it was different! In Germany there are quite a few schools which hand out locked down iPads to their students, with the expectation that they are used for school purposes and not for private usage or schools that have fixed installation school computers which can be used in exam settings.

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

#520

Post by jaredklewis »

hansvm wrote: post #401
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…

> have to manually run the code in your head If you're doing a good job, you have to do that anyway, or at least have enough of a spidey sense for broken code to know when to investigate and add an extra test case. Something like 30% of the time at $WORK, interviewers report the candidate as having solved the problem when a closer inspection reveals UB, memory corruption, and other bullshit. The test cases pass, and…

I'm fine with paper tests as a tradeoff, but in the real world where I am paid to program, I am a strong advocate of advanced type checkers/compilers and other static code analysis tools because they can keep all the code "in their head." They can keep far, far more code "in their head" than even the most gifted programming savants. Literally as I type out a mistake, the type checker alerts me to it.

So in some theoretical hiring example, if I have to choose between two candidates: one which is really good at keeping the code in the head and the other who is less good at that, but who is very skilled at using programming tools like advanced type systems or formal verification tools, then I'd prefer the latter.

Of course in practice, I would of course take a student that I knew had passed their paper test with their own knowledge over a student that likely ran their digital test through an LLM.

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