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Implications of AI to schools

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Re: Implications of AI to schools

#391

Post by jerf »

scruple wrote: post #387
ako wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son recently told me his teacher used him as an example for the class as someone who wrote a good piece himself. Teacher accused all the other students of using AI. He also told me that he had in fact used AI, but asked AI multiple times to simplify the text, and he had entered the simplified version. He liked the first version best, but was aware his teacher would consider it written by AI. Guess the teachers hav…

Further, what's to stop anyone from pumping text into an LLM and then re-writing it's output to match their own style, etc.?

Nothing. Word is getting around about how to do this. I anticipate that in another couple of years it'll have diffused to everyone, except the constant crew of new younglings who have to find out and be told about it from their older siblings and such.

"AI detection" wasn't even a solution in the short term and it won't be going forward. Take-home essays are dead, the teachers are collectively just hoping some superhero will swoop in and somehow save them. Sometimes such a thing is possible, but it isn't going to happen this time.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#392

Post by SoftTalker »

beeflet wrote: post #175
randcraw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to prove that you did the work and not an AI. Show your work. Explain to the teacher why you wrote what you did, why that particular approach to the narrative appealed to you and you chose that as the basis for your work. Show an outline on which the paper was based. Show rough drafts. Explain how you revised the work, where you found your references, and why you retained some sources in the paper…

I agree, it isn't hard! Watch: Computer, show "my" work and explain to the teacher why "I" wrote what "I" did, describe why that particular approach to the narrative appealed to "me" and "I" chose that as the basis of "my" work. Produce an outline on which the paper could have been based and possible rough drafts, then explain how I could have revised the work to produce the final result.

And if you do all of that, and memorize it well enough to have an in-person debate with the teacher over whether or not you did the work, then maybe that's close enough to actually doing the work?

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#393

Post by whearyou »

polyrand wrote: post #281

There is too much focus on students cheating with AI and not enough on the other side of the equation: teachers. I've seen assignments that were clearly graded by ChatGPT. The signs are obvious: suggestions that are unrelated to the topic or corrections for points the student actually included. But of course, you can't 100% prove it. It's creating a strange feedback loop: students use an LLM to write the essay, and t…

“It's creating a strange feedback loop: students use an LLM to write the essay, and teachers use an LLM to grade it. It ends up being just one LLM talking to another, with no human intelligence in the middle.”

This was the plot to a recent South Park episode: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27035146/

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#394

Post by ericmcer »

polyrand wrote: post #281

There is too much focus on students cheating with AI and not enough on the other side of the equation: teachers. I've seen assignments that were clearly graded by ChatGPT. The signs are obvious: suggestions that are unrelated to the topic or corrections for points the student actually included. But of course, you can't 100% prove it. It's creating a strange feedback loop: students use an LLM to write the essay, and t…

It is probably a good time to view the root goals of education instead of the markers of success that we have been shooting at for a long time now (worksheets, standardized tests, etc.).

A one hour lecture where students (especially > "Education seemed slow to adapt to the internet and mobile phones, usually treating them as threats rather than tools. Given the current incentive structure and the lack of understanding of how LLMs work"

Good point, it is less like a threat and more like... "how do we shoehorn this into our current processes without adapting them at all? Oh cool now the LLM generates and grades the worksheets for me!".

We might need to adjust to more long term projects, group projects, and move away from lectures. A teacher has 5*60=300 minutes a week with a class of ~26. If you broke the class into groups of 4 - 5 you could spend a significant amount of time with each group and really get a feel for the students beyond what grade the computer gives to their worksheet.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#395

Post by jerf »

bmacho wrote: post #385
hamdingers wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Goodhart's law.

Nah. Goodhart's law is literally just "if you play a matrix game don't announce your pick in advance". It is not a real law, or not different from common sense. (By matrix game I mean what wiki calls "Normal form game[0]", e.g. rock-paper-scissors or prisoner's dilemma.) In education, regarding exams, Goodhart's law just means that you should randomize your test questions instead of telling the students the questions…

That's not even remotely true. A randomized standardized test will still have some domain that it chooses its questions from and that domain will be perfectly susceptible to Goodhart's Law. It is already the case that no one is literally teaching "On the SAT you're going to get this problem about triangle similarity and the answer is C." When a fresh batch of students sits down in front of some year's SATs the test is still effectively "randomized" relative to the education they received. But that randomization is relative to a rigid standardized curriculum and the teaching was absolutely Goodhart'd relative to that curriculum.

"The only way for students to pass is to learn the material."

Part of Goodhart's law in this context is precisely that it overdetermines "the material" and there is no way around this.

I wish Goodhart's law was as easy to dodge as you think it is, but it isn't.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#396

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

ako wrote: post #379
ubj wrote: post #7

One of my students recently came to me with an interesting dilemma. His sister had written (without AI tools) an essay for another class, and her teacher told her that an "AI detection tool" had classified it as having been written by AI with "100% confidence". He was going to give her a zero on the assignment. Putting aside the ludicrous confidence score, the student's question was: how could his sister convince the…

My son recently told me his teacher used him as an example for the class as someone who wrote a good piece himself. Teacher accused all the other students of using AI. He also told me that he had in fact used AI, but asked AI multiple times to simplify the text, and he had entered the simplified version. He liked the first version best, but was aware his teacher would consider it written by AI. Guess the teachers hav…

There's an easy fix. All course work must be completed in class without tools.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#397

Post by SoftTalker »

raincole wrote: post #170
johanam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit history in Google docs is a good way to defend yourself from AI tool use accusations

The funny part is that Googe has all the edit history data. In other words, it's a piece of cake for them to train a model that mimics human editing process. The only thing prevents them from doing so is the fact Google is too big to sell a "plagiarism assistant."

So the model is going to spend hours hesitantly typing in a google doc, moving paragraphs around, cutting and pasting, reworking sentences, etc so that the timestamped history matches up with something a human could realistically have done?

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#398

Post by hamdingers »

bmacho wrote: post #385
hamdingers wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Goodhart's law.

Nah. Goodhart's law is literally just "if you play a matrix game don't announce your pick in advance". It is not a real law, or not different from common sense. (By matrix game I mean what wiki calls "Normal form game[0]", e.g. rock-paper-scissors or prisoner's dilemma.) In education, regarding exams, Goodhart's law just means that you should randomize your test questions instead of telling the students the questions…

I do not believe schooling is purely an exercise in knowledge transfer, especially grade school.

School needs to provide opportunities to practice applying important skills like empathy, tenacity, self-regulation, creativity, patience, collaboration, critical thinking, and others that cannot be assessed using a multiple choice quiz taken in silence. When funding is tied to performance on trivia, all of the above suffers.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#399

Post by georgebcrawford »

nkrisc wrote: post #362
lucideng wrote: post #351

To me the solution is: Ban homework. All projects, essays, tests, etc are done at school on air-gapped machines or written by hand. Work is monitored by the teacher with video surveillance in 'test halls'. Cell phones can be kept in a small locker. If the student needs to be reached, a parent or whomever can call the school. Internet research should be done in a separate environment, printed out, then taken to the 'w…

Assign homework that, if one actually does the work themselves, will help them hone the skills they'll need for the in-class assessment. Then allow students who want their homework evaluated for feedback to turn it in, but no homework will be graded. This relegates the use of AI to personal choice of learning style and any misuse of AI is only hurting the student.

> This relegates the use of AI to personal choice of learning style and any misuse of AI is only hurting the student.

I'm a teacher. Kids don't have the capacity to make this choice without guidance. There are so so many that don't (can't?) make the link between what we teach and how they grow as learners. And this is at a rich school with well-off parents who largely value education.

Re: Implications of AI to schools

#400

Post by SamuelAdams »

Balgair wrote: post #311

Again, AI is not getting rid of degrees or learning or education. It's getting rid of cheap methods. Scantrons and bluebooks were always a way that made it cheap for institutions to produce results. Now those methods kinda seem silly, right? 500 person freshman lectures seem kinda absurd now, right? Teaching via adjuncts that had 3 days notice for the class and are paid nothing is kinda scammy, right? R1s professors…

The silver lining is the Demographic Cliff of 2025:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cli...

PDF warning: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr73/nvsr73-02.pdf

Colleges will need to reduce class sizes, or close entirely, for the next decade at least. With smaller class sizes brings the opportunity for course instructors to provide more time per pupil so that things like in-person homework and project review is possible.

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