Fuck AI

It should be treated the same as if another student wrote the paper. If it was used as a research tool where you didn't repeat it word for word then it's cool, it can be treated like a peer that helped you research. But using it to fully write then it's an instant fail because you didn't do anything.

From later in the article:

Students are afraid to fail, and AI presents itself as a saviour. But what we learn from history is that progress requires failure. It requires reflection. Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead.

I think this is the big issue with 'ai cheating'. Sure, the LLM can create a convincing appearance of understanding some topic, but if you're doing anything of importance, like making pizza, and don't have the critical thinking you learn in school then you might think that glue is actually a good way to keep the cheese from sliding off.

A cheap meme example for sure, but think about how that would translate to a Senator trying to deal with more complex topics.... actually, on second thought, it might not be any worse. 🤷

Edit: Adding that while critical thinking is a huge part. it's more of the "you don't know what you don't know" that tripped these students up, and is the danger when using LLM in any situation where you can't validate it's output yourself and it's just a shortcut like making some boilerplate prose or code.

I've been using it for a personal project, and it's been wonderful.

It hasn't written a word for me. But it's been really damn helpful as a research assistant. I can have it provide lists of unexplained events by location, or provide historical details about specific things in about 5 seconds.

And for quicky providing editing advice, where to punch up the language, what I can cut, or communicate more clearly. And I can do that without begging a person for days to read.

Is it always perfect? Not at all, but it definitely helps overall, when you make it clear to be honest, and not sugar-coat things. It's definitely mostly mediocre for creative advice, but good for technical advice.

It's a tool, and it can be used correctly, or it can be used to cheat.

Students would want to learn instead of doing less work if there were incentives to learn instead of just get out with a degree.

I think the only solution is the Cambridge exam system.

The only grade they get is at the final written exam. all other assignments and tests are formative, to see if they are on track or to practice skills... This way it does not matter if a student cheats in those assignments, they only hurt themselves. Sorry for the final exam stress though.

Idiocracy is locked in. Rhey all should be expelled.

Obviously, the inclusion of Marxism is a decent test, but I have taken samples of things I have written years ago and submitted them to see what it would say about my writing.

It says a high probability of my writing was done by AI, because I do use emdashes, oxford commas, and other such punctuation.

We can't trust anything checking to see if something was written by AI, any more than we can trust something written by AI.

Let me tell you why the Trojan horse worked. It is because students do not know what they do not know. My hidden text asked them to write the paper “from a Marxist perspective”. Since the events in the book had little to do with the later development of Marxism, I thought the resulting essay might raise a red flag with students, but it didn’t.

I had at least eight students come to my office to make their case against the allegations, but not a single one of them could explain to me what Marxism is, how it worked as an analytical lens or how it even made its way into their papers they claimed to have written. The most shocking part was that apparently, when ChatGPT read the prompt, it even directly asked if it should include Marxism, and they all said yes. As one student said to me, “I thought it sounded smart.”

Christ.......

Whatever happened to the tests which you have to sit and do to prove you know the thing you’re writing about?

I can't be bothered to pay attention to anything UK related. Its like Greenland and Antarctica to me.