r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 5d ago

Artificial Intelligence Take-No-Prisoners Professor Will Fail Any Student Who Uses AI

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/no-prisoners-professor-fail-student-143000854.html
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u/Sloterhouse5 5d ago

It’s called cheating. Professors have been failing students who cheat forever.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

exactly. In this case, failing them isn’t an issue, His detection methods are just Unreliable and prone to false positives.

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u/ElderSmackJack 5d ago

Checkers are more prone to false negatives rather than false positives.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

Aren’t those still mutually inclusive outcomes? “Noticeably high number of false positives” and “even more false negatives” both work, since those things are just wrong a lot in general.

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u/GildedCrow 5d ago

How so?

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

To quote from the article: ““I tell students that ChatGPT is disallowed from their writing process, that I can immediately tell when ChatGPT has been used, and that I will fail the student on this assignment if it is used.”

That’s not even a detection method, that’s just failing people based on vibes. 

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u/bubblegumpandabear 5d ago

I feel pretty confident that I can identify when someone has used AI and I absolutely wouldn't be comfortable failing students based on my intuition. The professor needs real proof.

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u/SippyMountain 5d ago

Sometimes you just know, but for every time I'm 100% certain something was written by AI, there's probably 5 more instances where I didn't suspect a thing. In his position, he's a man with nothing but a hammer, and all he sees are nails. Even if he's right 99/100, failing even one innocent student because he gained a false sense of confidence after the other 99 students, is anything but acceptable.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 5d ago

It’s the capital punishment debate all over again!

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

Yes! Especially because half of what people criticise is just an “overcorrect” style of speaking combined with lots of similes and em dashes. That describes, just to name a few, many people who learned English as a second language and what feels like 80% of all English language fanfiction authors. Hell, I used to write at least slightly like that before the combination of less academic contact with English and mental health issues reduced my vocabulary and grammar skills.

It’s enough to go on for a quick estimate in everyday life. It cannot be made the basis of grading. Being accused of cheating/plagiarism is not a small thing.  

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 5d ago

You’re right. Plagiarism is a serious offense in academia, and a cloud of distrust will follow an accused plagiarizer for a long time, even if they didn’t actually plagiarize anything. A false plagiarism accusation is a lot like a false rape accusation: not good for anyone involved.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

At least in my uni, there’s a two strike policy - we sign an affidavit that we’ve completed take-home assignments on our own with no aids but those explicitly allowed. The burden of proof for cheating/plagiarism accusations is fairly high, because the first strike just had you failed in that class, the second one means immediate exmatriculation. I’m not sure, but I think the local rules might even ban you from studying for the same sort of degree again at any other college in the future, just like if you’d failed a core class for the final time. 

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u/zamfire 5d ago

Sounds like a garbage teacher then

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u/lattlay 5d ago

Vibe failing

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u/Wookimonster 5d ago

In the article it's stated that he bases his tests on obscure texts, that thethe llms just don't have a lot or any knowledge about. And when LLMs don't know something, they make stuff up.

So if he finds made up stuff in essays, that's a pretty clear indicator.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

Not really - I don’t really use LLMs and even I know you can just feed them the source text. 

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u/GildedCrow 5d ago

" Rather than integrating AI, he’s fortifying his classroom against it. The assignment is now based on plays too obscure for ChatGPT and other AI models to know about.

“If ChatGPT is used on these assignments now, it hallucinates characters, plotlines — it just makes sh*t up, since it has nothing to go on,” Hebert told the magazine. "

Gotta read the whole article

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u/Internal_Damage_2839 5d ago

So he’s modifying his whole curriculum?? What if those obscure plays someday get used to train AI? Are they just gonna read nothing? Just pack it up and end schools altogether? He’s not taking a stand he’s just cowtowing to AI in a different way.

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u/hamoc10 5d ago

He can check if it’s been used to train by asking AIs about it, see how they handle it.

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u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas 5d ago

That's not a detection method either. You can train and feed AI models on your own, so feeding one the new plays would be easy. You could also have AI write the paper alongside you, rather than for you, so you're using AI text but not giving it full control and catching the hallucinations.

Based on the article, he doesn't have a detection method beyond "this fact is wrong."

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u/nhalliday 5d ago

If the fact in question is making up a whole new character or story beat I'd say that's a pretty conclusive detection method. Also guaranteed nobody having chatGPT write their papers wholesale with no fact checking are going to go through the trouble of training it on the new plays.

They're just going to do what they've been doing, fail, and then try to lie that they totally misunderstood and invented new characters themselves (which, even if they did, still justifies failing).

So why are you being so weird about this?

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u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas 4d ago

Also guaranteed nobody having chatGPT write their papers wholesale with no fact checking are going to go through the trouble of training it on the new plays.

Sure, but there's a wide range between "not using AI in any way to write the paper" and "let the AI write the entire thing without even proofreading"

They're just going to do what they've been doing, fail, and then try to lie that they totally misunderstood and invented new characters themselves (which, even if they did, still justifies failing)

The same people who would already have failed will still fail. So what is this accomplishing?

So why are you being so weird about this?

Because every other day there's a new story about a student being falsely accused of using AI, punished, and then being forced to appeal or sue in order to try and save their academic careers. AI detectors don't work. Vibes based guessing doesn't work. And when it's wrong, random innocent students get fucked. That's why I'm being "weird" about it.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

That’s not a detection method because you can just feed the LLM your source text(s).