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427 points JumpCrisscross | 56 comments | | HN request time: 0.603s | source | bottom
1. jmugan ◴[] No.41897583[source]
My daughter was accused of turning in an essay written by AI because the school software at her online school said so. Her mom watched her write the essay. I thought it was common knowledge that it was impossible to tell whether text was generated by AI. Evidently, the software vendors are either ignorant or are lying, and school administrators are believing them.
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2. clipsy ◴[] No.41897721[source]
> Evidently, the software vendors are either ignorant or are lying

I’ll give you a hint: they’re not ignorant.

3. add-sub-mul-div ◴[] No.41897958[source]
Imagine how little common knowledge there will be one or two generations down the road after people decide they no longer need general thinking skills, just as they've already decided calculators free them from having to care about arithmetic skills.
replies(4): >>41901342 #>>41901364 #>>41901873 #>>41901988 #
4. lithos ◴[] No.41898000[source]
AI does have things it does consistently wrong. Especially if you don't narrow down what it's allowed to grab from.

The easiest for someone here to see is probably code generation. You can point at parts of it and go "this part is from a high-school level tutorial", "this looks like it was grabbed from college assignments", and "this is following 'clean code' rules in silly places"(like assuming a vector might need to be Nd, instead of just 3D).

5. newZWhoDis ◴[] No.41898366[source]
The education system in the US is broadly staffed by the dumbest people from every walk of life.

If they could make it elsewhere, they would.

I don’t expect this to be a popular take here, and most replies will be NAXALT fallacies, but in aggregate it’s the truth. Sorry, your retired CEO physics teacher who you loved was not a representative sample.

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6. ◴[] No.41898548[source]
7. krick ◴[] No.41898704[source]
It's not just USA, it's pretty much universal, as much as I've seen it. People like to pretend like it's some sort of noble profession, but I vividly remember having a conversation with recently graduated ex-classmates, where one of them was complaining that she failed to pass at every department she applied to, so she has no other choice than to apply for department of education (I guess? I don't know what is the name of the American equivalent of that thing: bachelor-level program for people who are going to be teachers). At that moment I felt suddenly validated in all my complaints about the system we just passed through.
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8. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.41898784[source]
> your retired CEO physics teacher who you loved was not a representative sample

Hey, he was Microsoft’s patent attorney who retired to teach calculus!

9. Gud ◴[] No.41900573{3}[source]
In some countries teaching is a highly respected profession.

Switzerland and Finland comes to mind.

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10. Daz1 ◴[] No.41900887[source]
>I thought it was common knowledge that it was impossible to tell whether text was generated by AI.

Anyone who's been around AI generated content for more than five minutes can tell you what's legitimate and what isn't.

For example this: https://www.maersk.com/logistics-explained/transportation-an... is obviously an AI article.

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11. bryanrasmussen ◴[] No.41900902[source]
>Anyone who's been around AI generated content for more than five minutes can tell you what's legitimate and what isn't.

to some degree of accuracy.

12. lionkor ◴[] No.41900906[source]
In Germany, you have to do the equivalent of a master's degree (and then a bunch) to teach in normal public schools
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13. llm_trw ◴[] No.41901040{4}[source]
You can't eat respect.
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14. twoWhlsGud ◴[] No.41901119{3}[source]
I went to public schools in middle class neighborhoods in California from the late sixties to the early eighties. My teachers were largely excellent. I think that was due to cultural and economic factors - teaching was considered a profession for idealistic folks to go into at the time and the spread between rich and poor was less dramatic in the 50s and 60s (when my teachers were deciding their professions). So the culture made it attractive and economics made it possible. Another critical thing we seem to have lost.
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15. zeroonetwothree ◴[] No.41901127[source]
It’s impossible to tell AI apart with 100% accuracy
16. benjaminfh ◴[] No.41901150{5}[source]
In those places salary (and good public services) follows respect
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17. smokel ◴[] No.41901171{3}[source]
Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We educate everyone to be the smartest person in the class, and then we don't have jobs for them. And then we complain that education is not good enough. Shouldn't we conclude that education is already a bit too good?
18. kreyenborgi ◴[] No.41901323[source]
Obviously false, as LLMs parrot what they're trained on. Not that hard to get them to regurgitate Shakespeare or what have you.
replies(1): >>41901557 #
19. ffujdefvjg ◴[] No.41901340[source]
I expect there will be some legal disputes over this kind of thing pretty soon. As another comment pointed out: run the AI-detection software on essays from before ChatGPT was a thing to see how accurate these are. There's also the problem of autists having their essays flagged disproportionately, so you're potentially looking at some sort of civil rights violation.
20. arkh ◴[] No.41901342[source]
We don't learn directions now: we use GPS.

We don't do calculations: computers do it for us.

We don't accumulate knowledge: we trust Google to give us the information when needed.

Everything in a small package everyone can wear all day long. We're at the second step of transhumanism.

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21. Gud ◴[] No.41901357{5}[source]
They are well compensated.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-salaries-teachers...

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22. gosub100 ◴[] No.41901364[source]
It's more insidious than that. AI will be used as a liability shield/scapegoat, so will become more prevalent in the workplace. So in order to not be homeless, more people will be forced to turn their brains off.
23. CalRobert ◴[] No.41901509{4}[source]
It was the tail end of when smart women had few intellectually stimulating options and teacher was a decent choice.
replies(1): >>41901667 #
24. CalRobert ◴[] No.41901518{6}[source]
That article, after a very pushy illegal gdpr consent banner, says pay is stagnant and hours long
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25. Daz1 ◴[] No.41901557{3}[source]
Sounds like a skill issue on your part
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26. hyperbrainer ◴[] No.41901627{3}[source]
At least the first 2 are far more accurate than humans ever could be. The third, i.e. trusting others to vet and find the correct information, is the problem.
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27. llm_trw ◴[] No.41901749{6}[source]
Having lived in 'one of those places' no salary does not.
28. hhh ◴[] No.41901795{4}[source]
Why? We've done it for ages, most trust in Wikipedia, and before most trusted in encyclopedias. Books written by others have been used forever. We just shift where we place the trust over time.
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29. kreyenborgi ◴[] No.41901832{4}[source]
Let's test your skills as a plagiarism detector. Below are two paragraphs. One of them was written by an LLM, one by a human. I have only altered whitespace in order to make them scan the same. Can you tell which is which? How much would you bet that you are correct?

A. The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.

B. The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.

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30. Gud ◴[] No.41901870{7}[source]
Hours are long for everyone in Switzerland.

110k in Switzerland is a good pay today. The article is from 2017.

31. jampekka ◴[] No.41901873[source]
Maybe not having to learn to write "properly" means more bandwidth for more general thinking?

At least not having to care about arithmetic leaves more time to care about mathematics.

32. xyzzy123 ◴[] No.41901986{3}[source]
This selects for people willing to do 8 years of schooling to earn 60k EUR.
33. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.41901988[source]
And yet, this fear is timeless; back when book printing was big, people were fearmongering that people would no longer memorize things but rely too much on books. But in hindsight it ended up becoming a force multiplier.

I mean I'm skeptical about AI as well and don't like it, but I can see it becoming a force multiplier itself.

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34. hyperbrainer ◴[] No.41902032{5}[source]
Agreed, but google hardly gives you those results. Sponsored Ads and AI generated seo crap is hardly an encylopedia.
35. ClumsyPilot ◴[] No.41902063{5}[source]
I just googled ‘do I need a license to drive a power boat in UK’

I got AI answer saying ‘no’, but actually you do.

If I use a calculator it will be correct. If I open encyclopaedia it will mostly be correct, because someone with a brain did at least 5 minutes of thining.

We are not talking about some minor detail, AI makes colossal errors with great confidence and conviction.

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36. amanaplanacanal ◴[] No.41902134{6}[source]
It appears you think that giving women the same opportunities as men is a bad thing.
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37. bigstrat2003 ◴[] No.41902166{3}[source]
> people were fearmongering that people would no longer memorize things but rely too much on books...

Posters here love to bring out this argument, but I think a major weakness is that those people wound up being right. People don't memorize things any more! I don't think it's fair to hold out as an example of fears which didn't come to pass, as they very much did come to pass.

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38. foldr ◴[] No.41902204{7}[source]
AStonesThrow has, err, strong opinions on this kind of thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41885547

I would question the utility of engaging.

39. ben_w ◴[] No.41902234{4}[source]
Almost.

GPS is great at knowing where you are, but directions are much much harder, and the extra difficulty is why the first version of Apple Maps was widely ridiculed.

Even now, I find it's a mistake to just assume Google Maps can direct me around Berlin public transport better than my own local knowledge — sometimes it can, sometimes it can't.

(But yes, a single original Pi Zero beats all humans combined at arithmetic even if all of us were at the level of the world record holder).

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40. watwut ◴[] No.41902253{6}[source]
What I take from this is that you dont like reading about history much, with clear exception of overly optimistic religious texts. The religious vocation frequently got you into pretty abusive situation and the #1 expectation was "obeisance". That was what you was supposed to do, primary. Not exactly what person you are responding to is writing about.

Moreover, women never needed to start out as teachers to "be ready for childcare". The childcare expectations were much lower at the time, but amount of chores at home massively higher.

41. arkh ◴[] No.41902393{4}[source]
> trusting others to vet and find the correct information, is the problem

To be honest, we do for most things: I have not checked the speed of light. And I surely would not be able to implement a way to measure it from only my observations and experience.

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42. dxuh ◴[] No.41902584{3}[source]
And yet a staggering percentage of them are incompetent (both in their subject and as educators generally).

"and then a bunch" is somewhat misleading. They in fact take easier and fewer classes in the subjects that they are studying for, but they have to take extra classes on education, which afaik are not that hard to pass. Getting a "Lehramt" degree is much easier than getting the regular degree in a subject, which is why many people that are simply not good enough for the real thing do it.

Also we have a teacher shortage and more and more teachers are not in fact people that received an education you usually have to get as a teacher, but are just regular people with either a degree in the subject they are teaching or a degree in almost anything (depends on how desperate the schools are and what subjects they are hiring for).

43. fullstackchris ◴[] No.41902705{6}[source]
But you're comparing apples to oranges anyway... a mathematical problem is vastly different than a q&a problem - which of course involves language which is anyway a lossy form of communication.
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44. 71bw ◴[] No.41902725{5}[source]
One is the original, the second one is an AI verbatim copy

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm#:~:te....

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45. pennaMan ◴[] No.41902778{6}[source]
Try that query in perplexity :) Spoilers: it gets it right and explains the nuances.
46. slidehero ◴[] No.41903027{4}[source]
>People don't memorize things any more

....

and it made no difference.

47. hyperbrainer ◴[] No.41903168{5}[source]
Agreed, but google hardly gives you those results. Sponsored Ads and AI generated seo crap is hardly an encylopedia
48. hyperbrainer ◴[] No.41903172{7}[source]
that is the point. google is not Multivac
49. teeray ◴[] No.41903397[source]
> I thought it was common knowledge that it was impossible to tell whether text was generated by AI.

I think it is, however the dream among educators of an “AI detector” is so strong that they’re willing to believe “these guys are the ones that cracked the problem” over and over, when it’s not entirely true. They try it out themselves with some simple attempts and find that it mostly works and conclude the company’s claims are true. The problem though is that their tests are all trying to pass off AI-generated work as human-generated—not the other way around. Since these tools have a non-zero false positive rate, there will always exist some poor kid who slaved away on a 20-page term paper for weeks that gets popped for using AI. That kid has no recourse, no appeals—the school spent a lot of money on the AI detector, and you better believe that it’s right.

50. eulenteufel ◴[] No.41903769{6}[source]
Unfortunately the essays of your students can not be found on gutenberg.org. You have to try evaluating only the text and it's context to guess what's LLM-generated.
51. TuringNYC ◴[] No.41905013[source]
>> Evidently, the software vendors are either ignorant or are lying, and school administrators are believing them.

This is what will eventually happen. Some component or provider deep in the stack will provide some answer and organizations will be sufficiently shrouded from hard decisions and be able to easily point to "the system."

This happens all the time in the US. Addresses are changed randomly because some address verification system feedback was accepted w/o account owner approval -- call customer service and they say "the system said that your address isnt right", as if the system knows where i've been living for the past 5yrs better than me, better than the DMV, better than the deed on my house. If the error rate is low enough, people just accept it in the US.

Then, it gets worse. Perhaps the error rate isnt low, just that it is high for a sub-group. Then you get to see how you rank in society. Ask brown people in 2003-2006 how fun it was to fly. If you have the wrong last name and zipcode combo in NYC suddenly you arent allowed to rent citibikes despite it operating on public land.

The same will happen with this, unless there is some massive ACLU lawsuit which exposes and the damages will continue until there is a resolution. Quite possibly subtle features on language style will get used as triggers, probably unknowingly. People in the "in-group" who arent exposed will claim it is a fair system while others will be forced to defend themselves and have to provide the burden of proof on a blackbox.

52. DrammBA ◴[] No.41905798{5}[source]
When I visit a new city I trust google maps more than I trust myself with a paper map, it even knows all public transport routes and times, and can guide me through connecting different types of public transports (e.g.: bus + train) to get to my destination quicker/cheaper, that would take me and a paper map quite a bit longer to plan.
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53. ben_w ◴[] No.41905968{6}[source]
I trust it in new places for the same reason.

After I moved here and learned the system, I realised it had on my first trip directed me through a series of unnecessary train routes for a 5 minute walk.

Last summer, when trying to find a specific named cafe a friend was at, Google Maps tried to have me walk 5 minutes to the train station behind me to catch the train to the stop in front of me to walk back to… the other side of the street because I hadn't recognised the sign.

It's a great tool, fantastic even, but it still doesn't beat local knowledge. And very occasionally, invisibly unless you hit the edge, the map isn't correctly joined at the nodes and you can spot the mistake even as a first time visitor.

54. chatmasta ◴[] No.41909285[source]
> Her mom watched her write the essay.

I suspect there is a product opportunity here. It could be as simple as a chrome extension that records your sessions in google docs and generates a timelapse of your writing process. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard to fake and could convince an accuser that you really did write the essay. At the very least it could be useful insurance in case you’re accused.

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55. icehawk ◴[] No.41910317[source]
So how many hours have you spent as a teacher?

Because if you're putting forth the assertion "If they could make it elsewhere, they would." you've certainly had spent sometime teaching, yes?

I think it would be good to understand how much experience teaching it took for you to come to that conclusion.

56. nathants ◴[] No.41910327[source]
obs screen recording with laptop facecam.