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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

#571

Post by tigerlily »

mbreese wrote: post #431
hansvm wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Good, the grader should hone that skill at pace then.

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

#572

Post by utopiah »

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.

Sure if the field of study is about memorization, you did learn.

I'm not sure that exists though. There are challenges where that is indeed the entire "field", e.g. Pi digits competition, but otherwise for most if not all fields, it is about having enough knowledge to answer questions that have no yet encountered. They might be variations of questions you know but they are not verbatim the same.

Ideally learning about a field should even lead you to be able to consider, warranting you would have the resources to do so (e.g. time, experimental setup, etc), actual unanswered questions from the field.

So no, IMHO in most cases memorization is not learning.

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

#573

Post by pixlmint »

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'm currently getting my Bachelor's in Computer Science, while in-person is absolutely necessary, it doesn't necessarily need to be hand-written. We now have the exam questions printed out, and we respond on the online exam platform, just like we would before. It is explicitly stated that no aids, including AI, are permitted. There's usually the prof and at least one more TA walking around the room, if anyone is seen with something other than the exam platform open they fail the exam.

Some profs also started requiring special software for doing the exams, which works fine but is pretty annoying to use since it requires Windows, but that application basically hijacks the OS, making it impossible to navigate to any different webpage/ application.

In 2024, we had some coding exams, and AI was explicitly NOT forbidden, which lead to them making the exam more difficult (because with AI, you can solve it so much more quickly, so gotta make it harder), which was really annoying, because it made it practically impossible to solve it yourself because of the time crunch. I hope they realized how wrong that was.

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

#574

Post by yuye »

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.)

>How practical is this?

This is basically how ICPC works (https://icpc.global/)

Contestant computers boot a Linux image that contains all the interpreters/compilers and documentation for the supported languages, some editors/IDEs(vim, Jetbrains, Eclipse, etc) and a web browser.

Network access is limited to the judging system only.

My experience in Europe is that most universities can support this.

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

#575

Post by jyounker »

tialaramex wrote: post #204
walrus01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 would also be a huge discrimination problem. I (as part of a small team) run the IT side of exams for a UK University and as well as the many exams intended to be taken entirely with computers, we also deliberately have an exam that's always marked as "Available to take" regardless of where on campus you are and what machine you're using, that exam just launches a stripped down Microsoft Word, with no way to start…

Accommodations for those who have problems with writing has been a thing for a long time.

It's fascinating to see all the people here who are arguing that it is impossible to do what we did all the time in my step-daughter's childhood, my childhood, my parents' childhoods, my grandparents' childhoods, etc.

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

#576

Post by robertlagrant »

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…

> 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 libreoffice writer as a basic word processor.

Exams that only require paper, tables, and chairs can be done anywhere, and require minimal setup/set down, transport, or power, and no tech support.

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

#577

Post by jyounker »

mlloyd wrote: post #81
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so let say you give the students a pop-quiz. is that not acceptable anymore because some students don't do well when surprised?

Acceptable is different from being an accurate assessment of knowledge. The question is what is the teacher attempting to measure?

Pop quizzes verify that you're up-to-date with the current lecture material.

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

#578

Post by le-mark »

cycomanic wrote: post #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…

> 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.

Let us know when they institute stack ranking and 10% mandatory cuts every spring. Then academia will have been fully corporatized!

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

#580

Post by j-bos »

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…

Yeah corruption begets corruption. Who knew. But seriously this is a real problem that university and school provide a "safe" version of, see the same dynamics in any blatantly corrupt country for how hard it is to follow the law when everyone else expects you to grease pockets and or lie to officials with a wink.

Oxidation in steel structures is informative of where these things go and how to address them.

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