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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

(www.bloomberg.com)
427 points JumpCrisscross | 5 comments | 20 Oct 24 17:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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lwhi ◴[21 Oct 24 08:16 UTC] No.41901852[source]▶
It is no longer effective to solely use a written essay to measure how deeply a student comprehends a subject.

AI is here to stay; new methods should be used to assess student performance.

I remember being told at school, that we weren't allowed to use calculators in exams. The line provided by teachers was that we could never rely on having a calculator when we need it most—obviously there's irony associated with having 'calculators' in our pockets 24/7 now.

We need to accept that the world has changed; I only hope that we get to decide how society responds to that change together .. rather than have it forced upon us.

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gklitz ◴[21 Oct 24 10:58 UTC] No.41902805[source]▶
Written assay evaluation is not and has never been an effective evaluation. It was always a cost saving measure because allocating 30min face to face time with each individual student for each class is such a gigantic cost for the institution that they cannot even imagine doing it. Think about that the next time you look at your student debt, it couldn’t even buy you 30min time per class individually with the teacher to evaluate your performance. Instead you had to waste more time on a written assignment so they could offload grading to a minimum wage assistent.
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1. ordu ◴[21 Oct 24 11:38 UTC] No.41903033[source]▶
> It was always a cost saving measure because allocating 30min face to face time with each individual student for each class is such a gigantic cost for the institution that they cannot even imagine doing it.

So the obvious solution is to make students to talk with an AI, which would grade their performance. Or, maybe the grading itself could be done by a minimum wage assistant, while AI would lead the discussion with a student.

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2. lukan ◴[21 Oct 24 11:55 UTC] No.41903157[source]▶
I hope that was sarcasm?
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3. ordu ◴[21 Oct 24 12:47 UTC] No.41903590[source]▶
Probably. I'm not sure myself.

It is, because I'm becoming tired with the current AI hype. It lasts too long to be funny.

OTOH, professor talking with a student is a good way to assess the academic performance of the student, but there are some caveats beyond costs. For example, professor will struggle to be an objective judge. Moreover even if they succeed, they would face accusations of discrimination in any case.

AI could solve this problem, but I'm not sure if AIs will be up to a task of leading the discussion. Though maybe if you try to assess students on their ability to catch AI on a hallucinated bullshit...

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4. lukan ◴[21 Oct 24 13:22 UTC] No.41903905{3}[source]▶
"OTOH, professor talking with a student is a good way to assess the academic performance of the student, but there are some caveats beyond costs"

Why not have the testing done externally, by really neutral persons?

But AIs and especially LLMs are way too unreliable for the foreseeable future.

5. michaelmrose ◴[21 Oct 24 14:05 UTC] No.41904303{3}[source]▶
Actually deliberately introducing confidently delivered and reasonable sounding bullshit sounds like a fantastic way to suss out who knows their topic.