Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

This has nothing to do with AI, but rather about proof. If a teacher said to a student you cheated and the student disputes it. Then in front of the dean or whatever the teacher can produce no proof of course the student would be absolved. Why is some random tool (AI or not) saying they cheated without proof suddenly taken as truth?

The AI tool report shown to the dean with "85% match" Will be used as "proof".

If you want more proof, then you can take the essay, give it to chatGPT and say, "Please give me a report showing how this essay is written to en by AI."

People treat AI like it's an omniscient god.

> the teacher can produce no proof

For an assignment completed at home, on a student's device using software of a student's choosing, there can essentially be no proof. If the situation you describe becomes common, it might make sense for a school to invest into a web-based text editor that capture keystrokes and user state and requiring students use that for at-home text-based assignments.

That or eliminating take-home writing assignments--we had plenty of in-class writing when I went to school.

Universities don't exactly decide guilt by proof. If their system says you're guilty, that's pretty much it.

Unfortunately with AI, AI detection, and schools its all rather Judge Dredd.

They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Why? Because they *are* the law.

I think what you pointed out is exactly the problem. Administrators apparently don’t understand statistics and therefore can’t be trusted to utilize the outputs of statistical tools correctly.

That’s not even remotely true. You can raise it with the local board of education. You can sue the board and/or the school.

You can sue the university, and likely even win.

They literally are not the law, and that is why you can take them to court.

Source? I was accused of a couple things (not plagiarism) at my university and was absolutely allowed to present a case, and due to a lack of evidence it was tossed and never spoken of again.

So no, you don’t exactly get a trial by a jury of your peers, but it isn’t like they are averse to evidence being presented.

This evidence would be fairly trivial to refute, but I agree it is a burden no student needs or wants.

In real life it looks like this: https://www.foxnews.com/us/massachusetts-parents-sue-school-...

A kid living in a wealthy Boston suburb used AI for his essay (that much is not in doubt) and the family is now suing the district because the school objected and his chances of getting into a good finishing school have dropped.

On the other hand you have students attending abusive online universities who are flagged by their plagiarism detector and they wouldn't ever think of availing themselves of the law. US law is for the rich, the purpose of a system is what it does.

That could take months of nervous waiting and who-knows how many wasted hours researching, talking and writing letters. The same reason most people don't return a broken $11 pot, it's cheaper and easier to just adapt and move around the problem (get a new pot) rather than fixing it by returning and "fighting" for a refund.

I agree; I am not saying I am glad this is happening. I am saying it is untrue that universities “are the law.”

They’re not. That doesn’t make it less stressful, annoying, or unnecessary to fight them.

I’m not sure what “used AI” means here, and the article is unclear, but it sure does sound like he did have it write it for him, and his parents are trying to “save his college admissions” by trying to say “it doesn’t say anywhere that having AI write it is bad, just having other people write it,” which is a specious argument at best. But again: gleaned from a crappy article.

You don’t need to be rich to change the law. You do need to be determined, and most people don’t have or want to spend the time.

Literally none of that changes the fact that the Universities are not, themselves, the law.

>For an assignment completed at home, on a student's device using software of a student's choosing, there can essentially be no proof

According to an undergraduate student who babysits for our child, some students are literally screen recording the entire writing process, or even recording themselves writing at their computers as a defense against claims of using AI. I don't know how effective that defense is in practice.

The law is unevenly enforced. My wife is currently dealing with a disruptive student from a wealthy family background. It's a chemistry class, you can't endanger your fellow students. Ordinarily, one would throw the kid out of the course, but there would be pushback from the family, and so she is cautious, let's deduct a handful of points, maybe she gets it, and thus it continues.

I completely agree that it is unevenly enforced. Still doesn't make universities the law.

I hate that because it implies a presumption of guilt.

What a moronic thing to say.

Police aren't the law because they have been sued?

Police enforce the law. We aren’t discussing police; we are discussing universities. Some have their own police departments, but even those are beholden to the law, which is not the university’s to define.

Your police argument is a strawman.

That will be a dystopia. If I were a student still, I would rather go to the university physically, than install spyware on my computer, that only incidentally reports to the university, but its main purpose will be collecting my personal data for some greedy commercial business. No thank you.

That, or the uni shall give me a separate machine to write on, only for that purpose.

I hope many more will take them to court, so that they learn a lesson or two, about blindly trusting some proprietary AI tool and accusing without proof. They should learn to hold themselves to higher standards, if they want any future in academics.

> If you want more proof, then you can take the essay, give it to chatGPT and say, "Please give me a report showing how this essay is written to en by AI."

And ChatGPT will happily argue whichever side you want to take. I just passed it a review I wrote a few years ago (with no AI/LLM or similar assistance), with the prompts "Prove that this was written by an AI/LLM: <review>" and "Prove that this was written by a human, not an AI/LLM: <review>", and got the following two conclusions:

> Without metadata or direct evidence, it is impossible to definitively prove this was written by an AI. However, based on the characteristics listed, there are signs that it might have been generated or significantly assisted by an AI.[1]

> While AI models like myself are capable of generating complex and well-written content, this specific review shows several hallmarks of human authorship, including nuanced critique, emotional depth, personalized anecdotes, and culturally specific references. Without external metadata or more concrete proof, it’s not possible to definitively claim this was written by a human, but the characteristics strongly suggest that it was.[2]

How you prompt it matters.

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67164ec9-9cbc-8011-b14a-f1f16dd8df...

[2] https://chatgpt.com/share/67164ee2-a838-8011-b6f0-0ba91c9f52...

I've been going for a comp sci degree for the fun of it lately (never had the chance out of high school) and I've done this for different courses. Typically for big items like course final projects or for assignments it's mentioned are particularly difficult/high stakes.

You can't divorce the law that's on the books from the organs that enforce it. Any legal theorist will tell you that. Any lawyer will tell you that, and if you were ever involved in serious litigation you know.

> I would rather go to the university physically, than install spyware on my computer

Well yes, in-person proctored is the gold standard. For those who can’t or won’t go in person, something invasive is really the only alternative to entirely exam-based scoring.

Apologies if that’s how it came off, but that wasn’t what I was trying to say. Of course, in the moment the law is enforced, the enforcer “is the law.” That is true for any law, at any time, but it is not literally true. Enforcing a law unfairly can be (and often is) prosecuted as a crime, and gets either new laws passed or existing laws changed.

But that they can be sued in a court of law is actually a very big deal; it is the defining thing that makes them not the law.

A reminder of what I was responding to: “They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it. Why? Because they are the law.”

That is plainly untrue. There is something you can do about it. You can sue them, precisely because they are not the law.