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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

#641

Post by paulluuk »

> This year, the economist decided that both the midterm and the final exams for his course would be of the take-home, closed-book type (there is a certain tradition of this at Ivy League schools). “It’s a very nice kind of exam, because as you’re giving students practically unlimited time to complete it, it lets you make it harder than normal, to see how far they can go.”

I have no doubt that AI was used for this, but I am shocked that this is even a thing. Before AI, any rich or connected student (which I assume is essentially all ivy league students) could just get someone to take the test for them?

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

#642

Post by harry8 »

watwut wrote: post #542
harry8 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh do come on. Bernard Thévenet won in 1975 and has said he was using steroids. Armstrong was 4 years old at the time. We don't know about all the drug cheating at the TdF, just what we do know is damning in ways we can't pin on the vile Armstrong. Do continue to loathe him as much as you like. He's earned that. Ulrich, Riis, Fignon, Zoetelmelk, we haven't caught them all nor tried 1% as hard as those who got Armstro…

I did not said Armstrong was the first cyclist to dope. I said he made a real innovation in the world of doping. There were computers in 1975, but can you agree with me that several people brought in innovations between then and now? It is the same thing. Doping existed prior Armstrong, Armstrong revolutionized it and led worsening of the doping situation. His teammates were bullied by him personally to dope. That in…

Oh go on.

Look down that list of winners and the list of top finishers for two decades prior to Armstrong and the amount of doping among them that we actually found about and seriously try to make the case that Armstrong is the reason for "cheat or don't bother showing up."

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

#643

Post by Narishma »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #521
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…

>It's fine (tho annoying when you lose points to "typos"), this would also end up valorizing particular ways of thinking or developing, so those whose development methodology is more exploratory until you get a certain point where you get an overarching view of how everything should interact and then go into a quicker iterative mode would be penalized. I guess it's ok it does this, some things after all must be valor…

They can just do that iterating on a draft paper before doing the final version.

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

#644

Post by lordfrito »

The number of people here defending AI cheating as an alternative/clever form of "learning" is eye-opening. Also the people saying it's not the students fault they cheated, it's the systems fault.

All I know is I wouldn't want one of these cheaters performing open heart surgery on me, designing the airplane I'm flying in, or managing my financial affairs. Or marrying my daughter.

I would have thought the defense of cheating to be a much more marginal position.

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

#645

Post by Cthulhu_ »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #625
sdevonoes wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm finding AI increasingly harder to like. That summarises pretty well the whole situation. AI is cool and all, but not worth it considering all the disadvantages

but we can put data centers in space bro

The only problem that solves is SpaceX's cash flow / maintaining its demand for launches, and said demand is needed to justify developing mass production technology / processes for rockets.

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

#646

Post by hyperbovine »

lgcmo wrote: post #620
sombragris wrote: post #606

I was born in 1970. My teenage years were in the 1980s, in coincidence with the emergence of the home computer. I had a Timex-Sinclair 1000, then a C64, then a C128. One of my main forces that drove myself to learn computers was (besides games) the ability to produce text that was clearly written and readable, thanks to word processors and printers, because my handwriting was abysmal, and I got tired very quickly whi…

I was a teacher assistant circa 2023. I required every student to submit the assignments typed digitally, since grading a single handwritten one would take as much time as 5 typed. I saw a single fully AI generated assignment and it was laughable and an easy zero. I wonder how I would do it now.

That one early adopter student could conceivably have gone on to be the most successful of the lot.

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

#647

Post by parpfish »

sombragris wrote: post #606

I was born in 1970. My teenage years were in the 1980s, in coincidence with the emergence of the home computer. I had a Timex-Sinclair 1000, then a C64, then a C128. One of my main forces that drove myself to learn computers was (besides games) the ability to produce text that was clearly written and readable, thanks to word processors and printers, because my handwriting was abysmal, and I got tired very quickly whi…

of you could require presentations with a Q&A section at the end.

they can use the AI all the want to help their workflow to develop teh content, but the better engage with the material enough that they can field some questions at the end.

the main downsides are:

- takes a long time to administer

- the Q&A section leads to unstandardized grading, but i think that's fine. just away from scores on precise 0-100 scale and just score in a couple coarse buckets (superb, acceptable, fail, etc)

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

#648

Post by azangru »

peterbell_nyc wrote: post #637
sombragris wrote: post #606

I was born in 1970. My teenage years were in the 1980s, in coincidence with the emergence of the home computer. I had a Timex-Sinclair 1000, then a C64, then a C128. One of my main forces that drove myself to learn computers was (besides games) the ability to produce text that was clearly written and readable, thanks to word processors and printers, because my handwriting was abysmal, and I got tired very quickly whi…

The problem isn't the AI - it's the assessments. It used to be that shipping a large, well-researched essay with multiple citations was proof of work. Now it's proof of prompting, not learning or effort. If you want to test for memorization, you need a live test to do so. If you want to test for comprehension and understanding, require sessions with a tutoring AI and grade the level of comprehension exhibited. And th…

> And then please, please test for prompting with challenging assignments that would usually be beyond a student's skills

Does this mean you will requre all students to pay for a subscription to an llm provider?

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

#649

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bkallus wrote: post #174

I have seen it firsthand in the CS department here at Dartmouth. It is bad. We're currently designing a new intro systems curriculum, and we're thinking of it as an adversarial problem. That is, we're designing the course to ensure that a student optimizing for the best grade per unit work still meets our learning objectives. That means, as everyone else is saying, paper exams, but also 1-on-1 interviews to check tha…

> This doesn't stop students from generating code, but at least they have to understand that code in detail.

I mean even before AI this should get tested, as people could just copy code from SO or other websites, from books, or from their classmates.

I've done a few projects where the other students didn't really do much (in hindsight this was probably because I was excited and productive instead of helping and delegating work, which was selfish of me), but they were caught out in 1:1 interviews.

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

#650

Post by xtracto »

bkallus wrote: post #174

I have seen it firsthand in the CS department here at Dartmouth. It is bad. We're currently designing a new intro systems curriculum, and we're thinking of it as an adversarial problem. That is, we're designing the course to ensure that a student optimizing for the best grade per unit work still meets our learning objectives. That means, as everyone else is saying, paper exams, but also 1-on-1 interviews to check tha…

You reminded me of my Univ. Math's class (on integrals). The test was basically get one integral equation randomly and solve it in the blackboard only with the teacher present.

Because you didnt know which type of integral you will.get, we had to learn to solve all of them. We made.hundreds of exercises with a small group of close friends (the teacher gave us a book that's infamous in Mexico from an author Schaumm).

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