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Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
561–570 of 771 posts
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learning cursive won't automatically give you the dexterity of a dental surgeon, that's just a silly conclusion you have drawn from one example. What is the downside of learning cursive?
I learned cursive in elementary school. For me the downside is that it's a waste of time and attention that could be spent on something else.
Developing fine motor control for cursive is actually improving cerebellar function. It turns out that the cerebellum is a general "organ" for fine control and synchronization of neural function across the brain. It is implicated in:
* Reading and responding to other people's emotions. * Emotional regulation. * Generalized sequencing. * Musical ability. * Counting. * Following patterns.
While you may see it as a waste, you may very well have benefited in significant ways from learning it at a young age.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#563As long as university is symbol of status and requirement for "good" job, cheating will continue as the education is not what it is valued for, just the paper you get at the end
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#564One 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…
The sad thing is that it shouldn't even be immoral to use an LLM to help teach you the material, only to use the LLM as a substitute for your own skills.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#565I think one obvious challenge when it comes to Ivy League, and other prestigious schools, is that they attract very ambitious students - likely over average intelligent, too.
If you're the type that applies (and is accepted) to those schools, you are likely very informed on careers out there. So you also know what is at stake.
Good grades, or at least above a certain cut-off point, will open doors to prestigious jobs, as well as further studies. Finance, Law, Tech, you name it.
For these students, the stakes are high - and more akin to professional sports and draft season. I'm not saying this as an excuse to their cheating, but rather what the reality is for them. Again, not only is your competition smart and hardworking to begin with, but this sort of cheating is basically equivalent to academic and intellectual PEDs.
You could be studying English at Brown, with the intent to land a job at some management consulting firm or bulge bracket investment bank (1 out of 4 students at Brown end up in finance and consulting). Work that is miles away from your major, and where you're being provided the necessary training when you join the firms.
It is stupid, but understandable. And if you know others are doing it, it really only impacts you negatively if you don't. When so many of your opportunities come down to a two decimal number, people start taking risks.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#566In 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.
As a student, I have no issue doing oral exams or written exams without notes. I mean I'm there to learn and out of curiosity so I like that challenge... I truly don't understand how people can sign up for a degree and then have to cheat? Must feel torturous to endure a class you're not even interested in.
Some are chasing a diploma, career opportunities, family expectations, social status, or simply feel like they have no other path...
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#567I get why AI might be detrimental to the students especially in competing fields or classes, but they have a high chance to fail in life because they can't rely on ChatGPT or other AIs their entire lives and be successful.
But being upset that people use available technology to solve problems is quite an exaggeration and makes the guy close to being a luddite. He can just say "Hey, we do exams on paper and in class next time" and be done with it if he does not like technology.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#568> When he reported the case to high-ranking officials at Brown, he got a cold reaction. The response from the president, he said, was absolute silence. The dean did not comment either until Serrano took the case before the Academic Code Committee. At that point, he received a note acknowledging that what had happened in his classroom was “a wake-up call.” Serrano, a Madrid-born economist who has been at Brown for 34 years, believes this is not enough. “That cannot be the university’s position before an incident of this magnitude. Academic integrity is a value worth defending. The faculty cannot be left on its own
Is anyone surprised that the academics are essentially being left on their own about is? University management has become increasingly disconnected from the academics doing the work on the ground at least during the last 20 years that I've been in academia. Covid was really an eye-opener in this respect, at our university academics were told with very short notice to make all lectures remote. There was essentially zero support from central management, there was not even budget to buy headsets or cameras and academics were expected to use their research funds.
At the end of the pandemic academics were thanked with two years of 0 and 1% salary increase, due to a tough economic situation. During the same time the president received a 8% raise. The tough economic situation was entirely due to mismanagement, i.e. the university had invested pension funds into fixed interest investments which did not keep up with pension growth (during a time when stock markets were going from strength to strength).
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#569In 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.
As a student, I have no issue doing oral exams or written exams without notes. I mean I'm there to learn and out of curiosity so I like that challenge... I truly don't understand how people can sign up for a degree and then have to cheat? Must feel torturous to endure a class you're not even interested in.
For many people and in many places, having a degree is a differentiator that increases someone's chance of being able to earn money. Not everyone is studying because they're interested, but rather because if they don't, their opportunities will be reduced, possibly significantly.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#570[flagged]