Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I'd expect smart people to be able to use tools to make their work easier. Including AI. The bigger picture here is that the current generation of students are going to be using and relying on AI the rest of their careers anyway. Making them do things the old fashioned way is not a productive way to educate them. The availability of these tools is actually an opportunity to raise the ambition level quite a bit.

Universities and teachers will need to adjust to the reality that this stuff is here to stay. There's some value in learning how to write properly, of course. But there are other ways of doing that. And some of those ways actually involve using LLMs to criticize and correct people's work instead of having poor teachers do that.

I did some teaching while I was doing a post doc twenty years ago. Reviewing poorly written student reports isn't exactly fun and I did a fair bit of that. But it strikes me how I could use LLMs to do the reviewing for me these days. And how I could force my students to up their standards of writing.

These were computer science students. Most of them were barely able to write a coherent sentence. The bar for acceptable was depressingly low. Failing 90% of the class was not a popular option with either students or staff. And it's actually hard work reviewing poorly written garbage. And having supported a few students with their master thesis work, many of them don't really progress much during their studies.

If I were to teach that class now, I would encourage students to use all the tools available to them. Especially AI. I'd set the bar pretty high.

We may well need to invent new mechanisms for teaching, but I don't expect that to appear overnight.

The point of essays is not to have essays written. The teacher already knows. The point is to practice putting together a coherent thought. The process, not the product, is a the goal.

Eventually we'll come up with a way to demonstrate that along with, rather than despite, AI. But for the moment we have machines that can do the assignment much better than students can, and the students won't get any better if they let the machine do all of the work.