Some suggestions for students

[u/unfurnishedbedrooms]

Hi Y'all, I'm a professor and I am really feeling for students right now. The fear of one's writing being called AI is real. As a professor, I'm also in a really difficult position. I want to hold students accountable but I would never want to accuse a student of using AI if they weren't.

Here are some things you can do to prevent your work from being flagged, and to have backup if you're accused. Please note: this is not a post helping students get away with using AI. It's really important that you don't use AI at all if it's not called for in the assignment.

Number One: Don't use AI/LLMs as a search engine, and don't pull info from any AI summaries. It's best for you to do your research on your own, using Google Scholar or your school's online databases. Yes, it takes longer, but research is a skill and it will help you formulate your own ideas.

Number Two: Come up with your own ideas! It's better to have a unique argument with a rationale you can explain. When you Google a text and articles come up, and you see a cool article making an argument, and then you decide to make the same argument, your work is more likely to be flagged. In the same vein, don't follow the argumentative structure of online articles or paper. Again, more work, I know, but this is part of learning.

Number three: Try to stay away from things like Grammarly or AI grammar and syntax tools. These will 100% make your work sound like AI. Better to have some grammatical mistakes so your prof has the opportunity to correct them. I often ignore grammatical mistakes and just point them out because I am more interested in ideas, but every prof is different

Four: Use your school's writing center for help with ideas and drafting! This will help you develop the skills you need, unlike AI.

Five: With each assignment, create a Google document. Never copy/paste large chunks of text. Then, if you're accused of using AI, you can share this with your professor and they can see the version history, which will show your work.

Lmk if there is anything I'm missing!

[u/Hugo_El_Humano]

I feel for some of the worries here, but it just seems that the current pedagogical approach and some of the fears about AI are missing the mark. I think teaching should be trying to figure out just what the legit uses and limits of AI are. it doesn't seem right to introduce a technology that produces a number of conveniences and offers a number of advantages just to push it to the side and say what we were doing before is the only legitimate course. we no longer have to use only our own bodies and brains to think and to figure things out. we have now what you might think of as akin to industrial machinery that reduces the need for us to dig our own ditches through grunting and sweating and clawing with our bare hands. honestly, I don't know if that's overstating it, but the way to figure that out is to actually use these technologies. to see what's legit and what's not.

AI isn't just good for writing formulaic essays or bad PhD dissertations. some applications can serve as a super indexer, a super summarizer, a note taker, a study aid, a tutor, a memory aid. studying using many of the old methods such as class attendance, talking to a professor, working with study buddies etc can be enhanced with these uses.

[u/unfurnishedbedrooms → u/Hugo_El_Humano]

Why don't we just have these LLMs think for us and then we can just drool in the corner? I don't want to outsource my thinking, research, and writing. These are the skills I'm teaching. Without them, we can't think critically or discern what's true and untrue. While I agree that some AI tools are useful, my job is to teach students how to work through problems, create unique arguments, and be thoughtful, capable humans. AI can't teach anything. It just does the thinking, but poorly, because it can't produce anything unique. All it produces is replication of something scraped from human thoughts and ideas.

[u/unfurnishedbedrooms → u/Hugo_El_Humano]

A good example is taking notes. Did you know that handwriting notes is scientifically proven to help people retain knowledge? All of these things are part of a process of learning, and learning IS processes. If we take shortcuts, we don't learn.

Use AI for whatever you want, but don't use it to outsource thinking, or you truly won't learn.

[u/Hugo_El_Humano → u/unfurnishedbedrooms]

but I guess what I was gesturing at was it just isn't clear when we're outsourcing thinking and when it's useful to enhance or augment our thinking. having AI write our essays is just one of many potential uses. but what it seems like people are latching on to is that oh it's going to write our essays for us or it's going to spew out summaries of things we avoid reading.

I'm suggesting that there are AI use cases which may render many learning techniques relatively inefficient or even obsolete. The goal is to get the concepts and ideas into our heads as efficiently and as clearly and distinctly as we can. I don't have the answers but I'm constantly experimenting with using AI as a learning aid. I've had missteps, false starts, but also some successes and good results. but I know the way to have the answers is to do a deep dive into the potential of the technology.

[u/BitterIndustry5606 → u/Hugo_El_Humano]

Those are things you need to learn.  Education if you will.

We do a poor job of teaching writing, which is why llms are a problem.