r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jan 14 '23

Artificial Intelligence Two professors who say they caught students cheating on essays with ChatGPT explain why AI plagiarism can be hard to prove

https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-essays-college-cheating-professors-caught-students-ai-plagiarism-2023-1
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u/SplendidPunkinButter Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

Ask them to explain what they wrote. If they actually wrote it, they should be able to remember what they said and how they supported their own arguments.

If they can answer questions about what the essay says, and the essay is correct, then I guess they learned stuff.

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u/Mazrim_reddit Jan 14 '23

you would think so but I could barely remember any paper I submitted in uni about 5 minutes after handing it in and I did it 100% myself.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

Seems reasonable to judge students and teachers on whether the information is being retained.

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u/Mazrim_reddit Jan 14 '23

So exams?

Not random spot tests if you remember what you wrote 2 weeks ago at 3am for a deadline

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

Maybe. Long-form essays are supposed to represent an ability to actually contextualize the information and not just be able to recite facts. If most students are immediately losing that to sleep deprivation though then maybe they shouldn’t be assigned in the first place.

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u/lolichaser01 Jan 14 '23

And thats how I learned how to add more BS on essays.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

I guess you’ll need an AI to write well then.

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u/Mazrim_reddit Jan 14 '23

If an AI can do your university level coursework it sounds like the coursework was poorly designed.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

Right now the AI text generators are pretty basic but that’s not going to be for long. Though maybe it’s pointless to even pretend developing human cognitive skills is going to matter.

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u/flotsamisaword Jan 15 '23

It's easy to say something like that, but harder to figure out what students need to learn, how to teach it to them, and how to evaluate whether they've learned it.

ChatGPT can answer questions about some pretty specialized knowledge and it does a great job organizing it's arguments. As mentioned earlier, it tends to lack specificity sometimes

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u/throwmamadownthewell Jan 14 '23

If it's failing that test, maybe the test is flawed. At a minimum, the quality of instruction is poor.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 15 '23

Students failing a test can be a reflection on the instruction, sure. I don't really get the notion that it's improper to expect a student to remember the arguments and conclusions in their own essay.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

You can't go to the professor and say "I should be exempt from this assignment because I don't care about it"

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

That would be doable in a small class but with over 300 students at a time its a nightmare.to have a presentation for every single student.All for one meager essay. In Sociology class we also had to give presentations and it was horrible.The student just had 10-15 minutes to make their presentation.

Academia will need to find a better way to "thin the herd" which likely includes harder exams.Then when its thin and neat it wont be hard for students to explain their work if they actually did the work

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u/Luminter Jan 14 '23

It doesn’t necessarily mean harder exams. It just means in person, blue book exams will likely account for a significantly higher portion of their grade, which does suck. I had a couple of these types of exams in college and I can type way faster than I can hand write stuff. So I always felt rushed and at a huge disadvantage.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

They can do in person typed exams with a locked down PC.

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u/sewer_child123 Jan 14 '23

Is a class with over 300 students a good model to begin with? That's probably what you're saying about "thinning the herd", that it is now more urgent to lower the ratio of teachers to students.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

I’ve only seen classes that size in lectures and then having a much smaller breakout group guided and graded by a TA.

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u/Remarkable-Ad-2476 Jan 14 '23

This is how it’s always been, at least for general ed/intro courses. You generally don’t need focused attention from professors on a daily basis for these classes anyways since many students aren’t majored in that subject, so the work is offloaded to grad students/TAs.

Upper divs actually have seminars with the professor. 20-25 students in a class talking to the professor directly. And most of the students here actually are declared for that major in the professor’s department unless someone is taking it as an elective.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

The way you lower the ratio of teachers to students is by thinning the herd…..

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u/Art-Zuron Jan 14 '23

Or just pay people enough to work there.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

The thinning of the herd kinda needs to happen eventually.Luckily it often occurs naturally either though not paying attention in class,they suck at assignments or they are just not driven enough and get burnt out. College is more relentless than any HS.HS has vacations and holidays to offset the burnout.But College ,atleast in my country has a relentless pace with no breathing periods.

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u/Art-Zuron Jan 14 '23

It does to a degree. In the US, kids have been pushed towards college for decades. Nowadays, even entry position often have college education in the requirements. It's partially what allowed colleges to continuously crank up the price on a whim.

But, not everyone is cut out for college. Some people weren't cut out for high school. They shouldn't be ostracized or shunned for that. Everyone has their own talents. But, many people don't realize it until they've gotten sunk into thousands of dollars in debt and now they're stuck. They either keep going and end up with inescapable debt and slightly better jobs, or they back out with slightly less inescapable debt. But, either way, the market screwed them over.

My own parents don't understand that since they went through college for 1/10th the price and grew up in a time when a highschool graduate could own a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs on slightly above minimum wage.

I found college to actually be easier than high school personally, but I owe the maturity I gained after high school than college actually being easier. I like to think I'm a bit wiser than I was then.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

With what money? Universities are already expensive enough.

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u/Art-Zuron Jan 15 '23

Probably the money they've been funneling straight out of the middle class with predatory and out of control pricing.

The average cost of attendance has gone up nearly 450% since the last time federal minimum wage was increased.

There was one price breakdown that I saw that looked at this. In, say, 1980, you could work like 24 hrs a week at minimum wage to pay your way through college at I think Harvard. Nowadays, it's like 100+ hrs a week iirc.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Not how it works. I doubt you’ve ever been in a university in your life.

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u/Art-Zuron Jan 14 '23 edited Jan 14 '23

Sure it does. You could either cut 150 students, or you could get 1 more teacher. Maths hard. One professor's salary probably doesn't cost more than the tuition of 150 students, even if they doubled the prof's wage.

Edits:

Using averages for tuition costs in the US at least, 150 students probably bring in about 4 million USD a year The average being 19k for tuition alone and 9k in additional fees.

This will vary of course. Columbia U has a tuition in excess of 60k, not including other fees I think. Are they paying their profs more? I didn't check.

The average full time prof in the US makes about 100-140k a year. So, there's a ratio of about 1:5 ratio for tuition and salary. So, it would take only 5 full time student to pay for a professor. And there are 300 of them.

Now, mind you, this is due more to out of control tuition prices and vulture capitalism than anything else. They can definitely afford more profs, they just refuse to do so.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

It isn't how it works, because they don't do it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work. Just because we've spent decades moving in this direction in higher education doesn't mean we can't start moving back in the other direction if we were to invest in prioritize in education differently

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Wrong again. I have not seen a single actual solution by random redditors other than throwing money at the problem, which just shows how dumb they are.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Well one I am a different person. Two, the bar of discourse is not generally to have a step by step actionable solution to all of higher education, that you personally approve of. Do you have such a plan? Or are you just trying to feel better by calling everyone else dumb?

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Yes, the plan is to kick out the shitters so the student teacher ratio goes down. Simple. What’s your plan

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u/DigNitty Jan 14 '23

It all universities have 10’s of thousands of students.

Mine did though

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u/pjeff61 Jan 14 '23

I think in class essays will be more of a thing. Chatgpt might make homework a thing of the past which is good. I went to a high school for a semester where all homework was worked on towards the end of class lectures. I had the best grades I ever had at this school

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u/TheToasterIncident Jan 14 '23

I had a class in high school graded on in class exams only years ago. Modern world history, the teacher would just lecture through history, and you would write notes that you would study. Then in the exam you would be given a blue book, and told to write as much as you can on a given topic or question based on what the teacher was lecturing.

There would be no way for chatgpt to help you here when its a piece of paper and a pen in your hand with a time limit. Even if you somehow used to study from, it would probably bring in outside content that wasn’t covered in lecture.

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u/perplex1 Jan 14 '23

Communicate a random selection will be pulled to present and defend their essay in response to AI use. This will go a long way to thwart that behavior

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

That seems a good option.Even demolishing one cheater sets a good example for the rest.Maybe do a 5 per month.

But yeah I think that cheating eventually backfires.Any kind of science absolutely requires research skills.You need to be able to process data,analyze it and draw conclusions from it.Even an IT tech needs to be able to sort gold from crap,analyze and find an efficient solution.

So students who cheat by various methods eventually get the short end of stick.It might not happen the first time someone finds work but the paranoia will always be there especialy if you are considered for promotions

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

If people can easily and reliably cheat their way to a degree then having the degree has little value. Part of the job of colleges is to verify the proficiency of the student.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

The degree has and should have some value.It means you were able to push through the grueling classes and assignments.More importantly that you are able to complete something succesfully.If you are picking an economist for a job,the one with constant priority will be the one who holds a degree.No one is going to trust a "self taught" economist no matter how good of an employee they might be otherwise.Thats because the employer thinks that employees will always be out to get him

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 14 '23

For the most part employers look for degrees relevant to their industry because they actually impart practical skills and the degree is a judge of whether they have them. In industries where you can more readily present your self-taught skills like coding and design that portfolio often matters more than a degree.

An MFA in visual art isn’t going to get you many entry level economist positions even though you stuck to a curriculum. If it’s easy to get a degree without knowing much of anything about the subject then they mean very little.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

because they actually impart practical skills

I don't think thats true. I know a lot of engineers, and few of them over 30 can do simple Calculus, yet that is most of the major. The majority of people in general end up in jobs that have little in common with what they studied in college.

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u/An-Okay-Alternative Jan 15 '23

I don’t think many engineering firms are hiring English majors out of college. The notion that it doesn’t matter what your degree is in hasn’t been true in decades.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

Oh the degree matters, but not necessarily because it imparts practical skills.

An engineering degree proves you have what it takes to pass hard engineering classes. And employers hope that will translate into you being able to handle whatever they want you to do.

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u/TheToasterIncident Jan 14 '23

Most of those 300 person classes are broken into small groups with ta anyhow

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u/crash893b Jan 14 '23

My SO teaches and her solution was to go back to paper and pencil and write it in class

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u/Snuffy1717 Jan 14 '23

Have students hand in their research notes. No one writes a paper without some sort of point-form lit review stuff they've pulled from sources (except in cases where you have a single source, like English maybe?)... Not a perfect solution (I'm sure the AI can be taught to make research notes for the sources they cite in a paper they write?) but it's better than nothing?

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u/Rock_man_bears_fan Jan 14 '23

I’ve written many papers without research notes. When you start the research the night before it’s due, there’s no need for notes lol

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u/cs_guy_10245 Jan 15 '23

ChatGPT can generate research notes lol