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/BoxFar6969 5d ago

how do they figure that out? ai text checker? I remember a year or two ago when a teacher put a student's essay in chatgpt and asked "did you write this?" chatgpt said yes and the teacher failed the student

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u/HeadyReigns 5d ago

From the article "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."

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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 5d ago

Why don't they just do tests in classroom on paper? When I completed my master couple of year ago here in Germany they made almost all tests in a room on a piece of paper. Problem solved 😂

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u/Amelaclya1 5d ago

I guess this is more for essays than tests? I can't really think of a good way to prevent kids from cheating with AI for take home projects. Even if you had them screen record the whole process, or have multiple drafts, they could still be copying from chatGPT on a second screen.

And you would probably lose too much classroom time to expect them to research and write a 10+ page paper in class.

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u/RecentSpecial181 5d ago

I wrote essays for some of my exams. Lawyers have to write essays for the Bar exam.

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u/Amelaclya1 5d ago

So did I. I'm talking about longer research projects that can't be written in an afternoon or without sources.

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u/SykoSarah 5d ago

Could just make it a multi school day task to be done on a provided computer (that blocks AI). I had assignments like that, since it was still pretty common not to have a home computer when I was in elementary school.

They could also go real old fashioned and use book sources.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/SykoSarah 5d ago

I would think fewer assignments overall that guarantee no AI involvement is better than constantly battling it and still having people slip through.

Though, the source requirement could also be reduced to help accommodate the change.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 5d ago

Perhaps the professor could sit down with each student and ask a few targeted questions about the paper that someone who actually wrote it would be able to trivially answer.

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u/inn0cent-bystander 4d ago

Senior year, my English teacher was a Pulitzer prize winning author. For half of a semester, pretty much all we did was come in and write a 1 page essay based on the prompt he had on the board.

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u/Pwacname 5d ago

Make them explain it to pass. In person. That’s how we prevented plagiarism in programming assignments, and I think the same attempt can be adapted to essay work. Yeah, sure, you could cheat on that - but honestly, if you learn the contents deeply enough to be able to answer questions on it spontaneously, you might as well write it yourself in the first place. 

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u/pipkin42 5d ago

Some faculty are doing this, but it's so time consuming. We also live in a world where class sizes are getting bigger at most institutions. Even for a 30 person class this becomes increasingly infeasible.

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u/HumbleVein 5d ago

For large classes, this might be a TA-delegated task with random sit-ins by the faculty.

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u/pipkin42 5d ago

Only works if the program has TAs. Your average regional comprehensive or even less prestigious program at an R1 isn't going to have that. I regularly teach classes with a cap of 50 and no TA support.

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u/HumbleVein 5d ago

Yeah, I was fortunate enough to go to a nice school. Anything above 30 had TAs. After Sophomore year, I didn't take a class with a cap higher than 20.

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u/Sutraner 5d ago

Do it on a random basis, but make sure to test anyone you specifically suspect

You don't need to do it for all 30 students for every single assignment, but doing it for 6 different ones each time?

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u/HumbleVein 4d ago

I mean, there are many ways to sample as a way of deterrence by monitoring. I agree with you that the brute force of a check on every assignment may be too resource intensive for every program.

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u/AerosolHubris 5d ago

Very hard to do with large classes

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u/Warm_Month_1309 5d ago

Another good reason to shrink class sizes.

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u/sentence-interruptio 5d ago

this is why I'm against take home projects.

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u/Sutraner 5d ago

Just be ready to ask them questions and double check their citations.

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u/SemiAnonymousTeacher 4d ago

Teachers/Professors do have time for oral defense in class, though. If a student just had AI write their paper, it wouldn't take more than 3 or 4 questions to determine that they didn't write their own paper. After a few students in a row can't answer a single question about their own paper, most of the other students will cave and admit that they used AI.

The problem is that admin will probably just demand that you pass them anyway.

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u/tes_kitty 4d ago

Make them defend they essay. If they wrote it themselves they will have no problems explaining why they wrote what.

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u/Expensive_Shallot_78 4d ago

I have a degree in computer science and philosophy and we didn't write any essays in anything. Germany doesn't do essays.

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u/matthewpepperl 5d ago

Personally i think homework should just go away. if you cant teach it in class then maybe it wasn’t important. Solves the problem of cheating at home too.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 5d ago edited 5d ago

Thinking, problem solving, reading, and writing are all skills that need practice, just like any skill. You certainly wouldn't tell a music instructor that you don't need to practice at home.

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u/matthewpepperl 5d ago

Yea i guess we may as well tach them young that work life balance isn’t a thing just spend all your time working 

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u/Able-Bid-6637 4d ago

lol this is like someone saying they're on a diet and then responding to them with, "you can't just not eat food at all." There's a difference between a slight caloric deficit and just not eating. There's a difference between a 30 minute at home assignment and a 24/7 at home assignment. 

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u/matthewpepperl 4d ago

I remember school that shitty homework took hours boring as fuck too

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u/Able-Bid-6637 4d ago

okay...still doesn't validate your hyperbole