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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

#531

Post by jdshaffer »

nneonneo wrote: post #528
jdshaffer wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it paywalled? I honestly didn't realize that. Sorry. I'll edit the comment and change to an open URL and paste the two main ideas here: FORCED SKILL-BUILDING GOALS Where my original purpose of giving homework assignments was to help students build their skills through active engagement, I can no longer trust that all my students will have done it by hand. But I still want my students to feel the need to improve th…

Worth pointing out - modern multimodal LLMs (properly called VLMs, etc.) can easily take pictures as input and describe them in text. In fact, the CLIP model - one of the predecessors of modern VLMs - is entirely designed around being able to caption images with text. That said - requiring students to hand-write answers is reasonably effective. It's a lot more boring to hand-copy text out of an LLM answer than write…

I considered that... and in the "worst comes to worse" scenario where they decide to use an LLM and re-write everything by hand, I'm still hoping they'll learn SOMETHING during the copying process... kind of like the old time "copy books" that were once used.

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

#532

Post by haritha-j »

One thing I would say from the student perspective is, when you know for a fact that your fellow students are using LLMs, and you feel like you can do it honestly and earn a B, or use LLMs and get an A, it msut be a tough decision. Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat. In my undergrad I was leading in nearly all of my classes for 7/8 semesters, but the final semester had online exams due to covid, and I was suddenly a barely above average student in the last semester.

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

#533

Post by iLoveOncall »

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.

> They are optimizing for themselves, which almost always means getting a job.

Instead they should optimize for keeping a job.

Since you mention Amazon, I work there as a senior software engineer (almost 10 years of tenure) and the quality of interns has massively degraded since LLMs are available. The result is that where the majority of interns used to receive return offers, now the vast majority doesn't.

Similarly, a lot of new grads get kicked out quickly, before the end of the trial period, because they suck. A lot more than in the past.

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

#534

Post by mkl »

ninalanyon wrote: post #517
interroboink wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Everyone knows Oxford, but the are many thousands of universities, most of which are not known to most employers. I am not an employer, but I work in higher education and see transcripts of transferring and exchange students, and many (probably most) come with some kind of guide on how to interpret the grades, because there are a huge variety of ways of assigning them and defining them (e.g. at some universities a D is a fail, and at some a D is a pass - to know which you're looking at, you need a guide!).

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

#535

Post by zahlman »

nneonneo wrote: post #523
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.

Using a special computer works too. I do my exams with our institution's Computer-Based Testing Facility, a bank of computers with fixed software and firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site. As a result, I've been able to challenge students to solve interactive software security challenges on the midterm and final with automatic grading - something that would have been impossible with pen and pap…

> firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site.

... did LANs (Ethernet, with wifi disabled) stop being a thing?

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

#536

Post by shmeeed »

WalterBright wrote: post #416
__d wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been clearly shown to be beneficial for some people. I too happen to be one of them. For others, hearing stuff (and saying stuff) out loud is more useful. I had a friend who'd make nonsense songs of stuff to learn: just doggerel, but by singing it to himself when revising, he had a massive uptick in retention. He was so happy when he worked that out. I imagine there might be other modes that work for other peopl…

If I say "people have two legs", someone is bound to reply "My friend Bob has only one leg."

On average, people have slightly less than two legs.

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

#537

Post by zahlman »

Aurornis wrote: post #273
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…

> It's news to me that they weren't already. It’s an old (and outdated IMO) tradition at some Ivy Leagues, as the article notes. It may have worked in the era when students had a little more fear of repercussions and a little more sense that cheating on a test would only cause them problems when courses got harder later. Now it seems there is little interest in dealing with cheating, as evidenced by how hard it was f…

> Students also don’t believe cheating will cause them future harm because they assume they can cheat everything up through graduation the same way.

And in the workplace as well.

And so do their parents.

With alarmingly good reason, at least some of the time.

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

#538

Post by theturtlemoves »

haritha-j wrote: post #532

One thing I would say from the student perspective is, when you know for a fact that your fellow students are using LLMs, and you feel like you can do it honestly and earn a B, or use LLMs and get an A, it msut be a tough decision. Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat. In my undergrad I was leading in nearly all of my classes for 7/8 semesters, but the fina…

> Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat.

It depends per country. Here we use a grading system that isn't relative to how other students perform. You basically get a percentage score on how many questions you got right. Perfect score is 100. 55 and up is pass, below that is fail.

But still, teachers can make exams easier or harder depending on last year's scores, so there's that. In short, nobody will hone your mind for you, it's up to you to want to.

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

#539

Post by Ekaros »

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.

Only solution for that is permanent record. No "youthful indiscretion". You have taken cheating devices to test. You are permanently and for life out. All your past degrees are invalidated on the spot. There is central sex offender style registry. You are required to inform about your status in every future interaction.

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

#540

Post by negergreger »

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.

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