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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

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Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#301

Post by michaelt »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #277
michaelt wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such as? We need an answer now because students are being assessed now. Two decades ago, when I was in engineering school, grades were 90% based on in-person, proctored, handwritten exams. So assignments had enough weight to be worth completing, but little enough that if someone cheated, it didn't really matter as the exam was the deciding factor. > Return to the old "viva voce" exam? Still used for PhDs. But that…

Oh yes. When I'm teaching a class of 200 students it's totally plausible that we're going to do 10 15 minute one on one conversations with every student. Because that's only 20 days non stop with no sleep. We would need to increase the amount of teaching staff by well over 10x to do this. The costs would be astronomical.

I said one conversation per student per class, and ten classes per year. Not 10 conversations per class per student.

> The costs would be astronomical.

Those 200 students have paid the college $549,600 for your class.

The costs are already astronomical.

Is it so unreasonable for some of that money to be spent on providing education?

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#302

Post by everdrive »

elric wrote: post #260
lwhi wrote: post #178

It is no longer effective to solely use a written essay to measure how deeply a student comprehends a subject. AI is here to stay; new methods should be used to assess student performance. I remember being told at school, that we weren't allowed to use calculators in exams. The line provided by teachers was that we could never rely on having a calculator when we need it most—obviously there's irony associated with ha…

Was this ever effective? There was a lot of essay copy/pasting when I was in school, and this was when essays had to be hand written (in cursive, of course, using a fountain pen!). Same with homework. If everyone has to solve the same 10 problems, divide and conquer saves everyone a lot of time. Of course, you're only screwing yourself because you'll negatively impact your learning, but that's not something you can e…

>Of course, you're only screwing yourself because you'll negatively impact your learning, but that's not something you can easily convince kids of.

This assumes that homework helps kids learn, or that the knowledge required to succeed in school will help kids once they graduate.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#303

Post by welder »

lwhi wrote: post #178

It is no longer effective to solely use a written essay to measure how deeply a student comprehends a subject. AI is here to stay; new methods should be used to assess student performance. I remember being told at school, that we weren't allowed to use calculators in exams. The line provided by teachers was that we could never rely on having a calculator when we need it most—obviously there's irony associated with ha…

My first semester undergrad English course, the professor graded all my papers D or worse. Had to repeat the course with a different professor. They shared assignments so I re-used the same essays with zero modifications... but this time I got an A or higher!

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#304

Post by tonypace »

moffkalast wrote: post #232
dambi0 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An essay written under examination conditions is fine. We don’t need new assessment techniques. We have known how to asses that a student and that student alone for centuries.

Yeah we always did that in high school for essays that were actually graded, otherwise there's always the option of having someone else write it for you, human or now machine. The only thing that's changed is the convenience of it. The problem is more with teachers lazily slapping an essay on a topic as a goto homework to eat even more of the already limited students' time with busywork.

The lazy essay assignment is 100% real. However, the driving force there is not the teacher, but parental complaints causing ass-covering administrative mandates. "Why wasn't there any homework on topic X before the exam?" "We apologize so much for that, Mrs Keen. First, we will change Precious's grade, but from now on..."

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#306

Post by wrasee »

greatartiste wrote: post #111

For a human who deals with student work or reads job applications spotting AI generated work quickly becomes trivially easy. Text seems to use the same general framework (although words are swapped around) also we see what I call 'word of the week' where whichever 'AI' engine seems to get hung up on a particular English word which is often an unusual one and uses it at every opportunity. It isn't long before you real…

> trivially easy

That’s the problem. It is trivially easy, 99% of the time. But that misses the entire point of the article.

If I got 99% on an exam I’d say that was trivially easy. But making one mistake in a hundred is not ok when it’s someone else’s livelihood.

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#307

Post by fullstackchris »

smartmic wrote: post #292
mrweasel wrote: post #184

The part that annoys me is that students apparently have no right to be told why the AI flagged their work. For any process where an computer is allowed to judge people, where should be a rule in place that demands that the algorithm be able explains EXACTLY why it flagged this person. Now this would effectively kill off the current AI powered solution, because they have no way of explaining, or even understanding, w…

I agree with you, but I would go further and turn the tables. An AI should simply not be allowed to evaluate people, in any context whatsoever. For the simple reason that it has been proven not to work (and will also never). Anyone interested to learn more about it, I recommend the recent book "AI Snake Oil" from Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor [1]. It is a critical but nuanced book and helps to see the whole AI h…

I'm definitely no AI hypster, but saying anything will "never" work over an infinite timeline is a big statement... do you have grounds why some sort of AI system could one day "never" work at evaluating some metric about someone? Seems we have reliable systems already doing that in some areas (facial recognition at airport boarding, for example)

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#308

Post by shusaku »

greatartiste wrote: post #111

For a human who deals with student work or reads job applications spotting AI generated work quickly becomes trivially easy. Text seems to use the same general framework (although words are swapped around) also we see what I call 'word of the week' where whichever 'AI' engine seems to get hung up on a particular English word which is often an unusual one and uses it at every opportunity. It isn't long before you real…

What are you asking your applicants to do that LLM use is a problem? I see no issue with having a machine compile one’s history into a resume. Is their purpose statement not original enough /s?

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#309

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #301
light_hue_1 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. When I'm teaching a class of 200 students it's totally plausible that we're going to do 10 15 minute one on one conversations with every student. Because that's only 20 days non stop with no sleep. We would need to increase the amount of teaching staff by well over 10x to do this. The costs would be astronomical.

I said one conversation per student per class, and ten classes per year. Not 10 conversations per class per student. > The costs would be astronomical. Those 200 students have paid the college $549,600 for your class. The costs are already astronomical. Is it so unreasonable for some of that money to be spent on providing education?

[deleted]

Re: Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

#310

Post by OutOfHere »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #85
OutOfHere wrote: post #52

I am glad I am done with schooling. I would not want to be a student in this hellscape. For those going to college, I strongly advise picking a department where such scanning is not performed. For those in public school, sue.

I'm returning to complete a single class: the writing requirement. It's not that bad. You just run your paper through a 3rd party AI checker beforehand and then cross your fingers and hit submit. You're probably at lower risk than people who don't check. You don't have to outrun the bear, just your fellow students.

Good point. What I am curious about is how the noted "AI Humanizer" software sites like Hix Bypass work to defeat classification as having being written by AI.
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