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College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

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Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#441

Post by bmitc »

close04 wrote: post #115
bmitc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Take home exams represent how work and progress occurs in the "real" world. There's nothing in the post education world that resembles in-person exams. Maybe the medical profession is a counter example.

> There's nothing in the post education world that resembles in-person exams. I’d argue that dealing with any high criticality operational incident is like an in person exam (maybe even the most difficult kind, the open book one) if you are the one responsible for fixing it. Everyone is looking at you, you have time pressure to solve it ASAP and you can’t afford the time to dig through all the docs on the spot. So th…

I can understand that argument, but I don't think in-class exams are specifically good at that. I think for those situations, it requires more specific training regarding the domain, which is why I gave the medical profession as a counterexample.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#442

Post by PunchyHamster »

logicchains wrote: post #287
PunchyHamster wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I can't help but wonder whether schools are going about this all wrong. Rather than banning the use of AI and trying to catch students who are cheating, why aren't they creating schoolwork that requires AI? Because using AI is the complete opposite of "I learned programming just to make tests easier". By learning how to program solver, you not only learned how to program but also learned the method well enough t…

>By pawning it off to AI to solve, you have learned nothing, not even how to prompt correctly as test questions are usually formulated well enough that AI doesn't need prompt massaging to get it. If you got AI to produce a working solution, you solved the problem. In the real world nobody who's paying you cares about the method as long as you deliver results. Students taught to solve easy problems by themselves will…

Why would someone hire you if all you have proven is that AI can solve the problem, not you ?

And another question: why you are even at school if all you do is put questions into AI and pass on the answers ?

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#443

Post by oersted »

CBarkleyU wrote: post #428
oersted wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my public university in Spain, we always had the option to do a single final exam instead of the continuous assessment, although very few chose it. Generally the continuous assessment was less stressful, and the material stuck better, with room to digest it rather than just cramming for the exam and forgetting it right after. Generally the default expectation was that everyone was a full time student yes, but ther…

Re: oral exams in Germany Not sure when this was supposed to be the case, but for actual universities (not meant in a deragotary way, Germany has two types of higher eduction) in hard sciences, most classes are graded on a single written exam. Both in undergrad/bachelors and masters. Unless things have drastically changed in the last five years...

This was in Freiburg University, which is among the top in Germany and top 250 globally. Computer Science bachelors and masters, around 8 years ago, most courses had a final oral exam unless many students (roughly >25) signed up to the class. Some classes like Information Retrieval or Machine Learning had >100 students so they had a written exam, but most others were smaller and oral: Data Engineering and Databases, Cryptography, Physics Simulations for Graphics, Formal Verification Methods, Bioinformatics, Planning AI, P2P Networking... I had a couple oral exams in VU Amsterdam (masters) too but fewer and not the final exam.

I know that an oral exam might seem less serious and rigorous, but I do think the professor can get a better grasp of how much the student actually understands the subject through an interactive interview.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#445

Post by tenacious_tuna »

cvoss wrote: post #345
jfengel wrote: post #323

I can't compose at a typewriter the way I do with a word processor. I would have to write it out by hand first. If the typing is just transcription, I could just as well be copying from an AI doc. If you're doing it in class anyway, and providing typewriters, you might as well provide a locked down Chromebook. Cheaper and better for composition.

Writing an extemporaneous essay from start to finish in one draft on the spot is a skill that students were expected to develop in my educational experience in the US less than 15 years ago or so. If that's vanished, I'd be glad to see it come back.

> Writing an extemporaneous essay from start to finish in one draft

Every English class I had in high school focused so strongly on how important revision was, or at a minimum having an outline to work from. While AP tests expected us to dash off essays by hand in a single go I empathize with OP around how useful a tool revision is.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#446

Post by sarchertech »

balamatom wrote: post #437
sarchertech wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because It’s really expensive, time consuming, and difficult to gather exports together like that. The closest anyone comes to research university is national laboratory, or something like Bell Labs. But you’re unlikely to have access to those. And you’re unlikely to ever have another time in your life when you can take 4 years to devote almost solely to learning.

Yes exactly, why are those things the case?

It’s expensive because in a capitalist society experts want to be well paid.

As to why you’re unlikely to have another time in your life when you can do this, that’s also because of money. Life tends to get more expensive the older you get.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#447

Post by madrox »

amtamt wrote: post #291
madrox wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the fairest counter argument I’ve heard. One can hope that today’s AI will eventually be as cheap as a calculator, though.

I hope so too, however cheap is relative. One's ordinary morning coffee is a full day wage for someone else. If we could have decent models fitting laptops of most students, that would be point where we could possibly treat AI as we treat calculator or computer today. Just to put things in context, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8444gex65o shares income for a good number of people now a days. (note that many of…

I remember a TI-89 being mandatory for my AP math classes (calculus and statistics). It was utterly essential for solving problems in a reasonable amount of time. There were programs available to assist families who couldn't afford one so their children wouldn't be left behind.

I like to think we'll figure this out.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#448

Post by madrox »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #324
encrux wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI in it‘s current phase, definitely. However, we‘ve been seeing the transformer architecture plateauing in the last couple of years. There are still improvements, but open source models are catching up. I feel like at this point it’s an inevitability that given enough time, capable models will be cheap enough for everyone.

If poor students have capable models but rich students have much better models that go the extra mile for a great mark and do everything in a single prompt, it would still be unfair. For it to be fair, you would not only need good free models, but actual parity between free models and the highest subscription tier the big AI companies can offer. And I don't think that will happen in the short or mid term future.

When I was in AP classes in high school, you were required to have a TI-89 calculator. If you couldn't afford one, there were assistance programs.

You were not allowed to use a TI-92, which was the next step up. It had built-in solvers for many kinds of problems.

I'm not saying this isn't a concern, but addressing financially-based inequities in learning is not a new problem within certain bounds. There's established ways to deal with it. If we can get AI cheap enough that you can cover a year of education with $100 then we're in a good range.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#450

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

onionisafruit wrote: post #429
ryandrake wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also sounds vulnerable to bias, unless the teacher modified each project in the same ways. How did they ensure they gave each student an equally difficult challenge and didn't consciously or unconsciously make it easier and harder for different students?

Presumably they do the same thing for every student. I hope they aren’t unplugging a cable for one student while taking a sledgehammer to the next student’s router.

“You have 20 minutes to get to RadioShack and back with a new router. It’s 11 minutes one way by car. Good luck.”
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