Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 183 posts

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#41

Post by mold_aid »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #28
zahlman wrote: post #23

I object to the idea that the LLM writing that these students are trying to distinguish themselves from, is actually good in the first place. Although students might well end up writing worse because people are trusting the detection of LLM content to other LLMs. (And really, it's bizarre that these massively complex systems required to produce roughly human-like output, apparently offer such simplistic reasoning for…

> If you can't detect the whiff of LLM with your own senses, then it has been used properly and shouldn't be faulted. But wouldn't this apply to any cheating method? I don't think educators would be able to tell the difference between using a calculator, getting answers from previous tests, resubmitting assignments, etc.

We can't, and neither can the machines that people build and/or use for "detection." Everyone in this thread also needs to recognize the entrenched differences between secondary educators, who have wholeheartedly adopted AI products into their teaching workflow, and tertiary educators, who have adopted them only by necessity. "By necessity" in this case means "having to spend a ton of time dealing with, talking about, and learning about this nonsense."

The discourse around "cheating" with these products has always been a mistake. We should have characterized them less as "cheating machines" and more as "expediency machines." Because once you're invested in describing students as having academic dishonesty issues rather than skill issues, you've made it an administrative problem. You never come back from that.

For mine, we lost the issue long ago when accountability culture won. We should never have bothered with the idea that "mechanics, grammar, and proofreading" should be part of a "rubric" that "assessed outcomes" for "good writing." We should have just said "we don't care if you don't think this is worthwhile, because your time is worth nothing." The last two years of student labor certainly suggests this.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#42

Post by thfuran »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #40

Perhaps we should not grade students on weekly, or other occasional, writing during the term or semester. How about going back to the old system where, apart from experimental lab work, nothing is graded until the end of the term? All weekly assignments should just be considered prep for one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. They ca…

What exactly would the goal of this change be?

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#43

Post by kjkjadksj »

softwaredoug wrote: post #24

Maybe I’m less worried. Teachers seem to have adopted. In my experience educators no longer use AI detectors given the risk of false positives. But some work is obviously lazy AI content. When that happens, educators talk to the student to see if they understand what they wrote. Teachers cope with more in person writing, oral presentations, defense of what’s been written. If you think out it the pre-AI computing gene…

I think peak writing was probably greatest generation. We lost the art of correspondence in the years since.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#44

Post by j-bos »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #40

Perhaps we should not grade students on weekly, or other occasional, writing during the term or semester. How about going back to the old system where, apart from experimental lab work, nothing is graded until the end of the term? All weekly assignments should just be considered prep for one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. They ca…

Throw in some oratory presentations as well and that sounds like a curriculum.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#45

Post by ua709 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #22

Tangent: I've noticed I write a lot different because of combative online arguments. I have a problem. So much of my communication is directed to people who don't want to hear me or understand me. So I've become very punchy and repetitive, trying to hammer home ideas that people are either unable or unwilling to understand. I need to find ways to talk to people who want to hear and understand me. It's hard to find ot…

I'm guessing you mean politics, but surely this is topic, person, time, and space dependent.

For example, I abhor talking about modern politics. If it’s election season and I’m being asked to cast a vote or take some other specific civic action, then I understand it’s my civic duty to understand the situation and make a decision accordingly and I do.

But if it’s March and there’s really nothing specific I can do as a result of this particular conversation, I would probably also be in your camp of the “unwilling”. I would much rather chat about something else, or nothing at all.

I'm also assuming you're referring to in-person communication. If it's online communication, all bets are off. It's unlikely you're having a linear conversation and these days you're probably not even talking to a person.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#46

Post by zahlman »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #38
zahlman wrote: post #23

I object to the idea that the LLM writing that these students are trying to distinguish themselves from, is actually good in the first place. Although students might well end up writing worse because people are trusting the detection of LLM content to other LLMs. (And really, it's bizarre that these massively complex systems required to produce roughly human-like output, apparently offer such simplistic reasoning for…

The point has always been the act of writing itself. What you write about is almost irrelevant; it’s that you spent the time writing, that you had ideas in your head, and that you squeezed them onto the page.

Sure. And my point is that the assignment is poorly conceived if an LLM's output can appear to "have ideas" that satisfy the prompt. Last I checked, they don't do a good job of modeling a specific, non-notable person within particular constraints, and then all the relevant life experiences of that person. An LLM essay should be human-detectable for the same reasons that one from an essay mill would be.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#47

Post by NewsaHackO »

zahlman wrote: post #37
NewsaHackO wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't detect the whiff of LLM with your own senses, then it has been used properly and shouldn't be faulted. But wouldn't this apply to any cheating method? I don't think educators would be able to tell the difference between using a calculator, getting answers from previous tests, resubmitting assignments, etc.

Every kind of examination should be proctored. > using a calculator Students who are at a level where they'd be learning to do the computations a calculator does, shouldn't have graded homework. And even at that level, real mathematics is more than just computation. > getting answers from previous tests Decades ago, my teachers and professors knew advanced tricks for this, like "not just reusing the test questions fr…

I dont think you are being realistic at all.

>Students who are at a level where they'd be learning to do the computations a calculator does, shouldn't have graded homework. And even at that level, real mathematics is more than just computation.

So, a math level less than Real analysis shouldn't have graded homework?

>Decades ago, my teachers and professors knew advanced tricks for this, like "not just reusing the test questions from last year".

Math is not the only subject. For an English class, what constant would you change so that students get a comparable exam (especially if you are going to do this between sections in the same corhort)?

>resubmitting assignments

Students are not stupid, and obviously would not resubmit an assignment for the same teacher. However, there is a significant overlap between classes, so certain assignments should be retooled for other assignments.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#48

Post by mold_aid »

johnvanommen wrote: post #19
themafia wrote: post #4

If you're just going to use software to judge the output of students then why don't we all just keep them at home? I have a computer at home and it seems like everyone from the teachers to the school board have just abdicated their responsibility. This doesn't sound like a system that needs to be maintained.

Right? It’s the obvious question: why are they using software to detect software? I can detect AI written prose in less than five seconds; I would expect a trained teacher to be able to do that as well.

You know you can't just say "I detect AI written prose" and then do whatever you want about it, right? It's not difficult, sure, to detect it. It's difficult to prove that it's true and then punish the student for it.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#49

Post by ghurtado »

Buttons840 wrote: post #22

Tangent: I've noticed I write a lot different because of combative online arguments. I have a problem. So much of my communication is directed to people who don't want to hear me or understand me. So I've become very punchy and repetitive, trying to hammer home ideas that people are either unable or unwilling to understand. I need to find ways to talk to people who want to hear and understand me. It's hard to find ot…

It might not mean much, and it won't lead to an interesting conversation, but here's one that has read your comment, and every single word resonated like a tuning fork.

I find that a little faith goes a long way here: assume that you have a higher audience and speak to them accordingly.

Don't let the loud ones confuse you: normal, reasonable people (with normal, reasonable thoughts, just like yours) might not always reply, but they also read you.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#50

Post by kayo_20211030 »

thfuran wrote: post #42
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #40

Perhaps we should not grade students on weekly, or other occasional, writing during the term or semester. How about going back to the old system where, apart from experimental lab work, nothing is graded until the end of the term? All weekly assignments should just be considered prep for one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. They ca…

What exactly would the goal of this change be?

Ultimately, you ask the student, in one audited test, to demonstrate that they've absorbed the essence of the course material and have developed some level of mastery.
Post reply on HN