I put your question in the AI, here is what came back “AI technology has become increasingly sophisticated over the years, and is now capable of recognizing when it is being asked to generate the same content more than once. In fact, most modern AI systems are now able to detect when the same information is being provided, and will use different methods to generate the requested content. For example, if two people provide the same information to the AI, it may generate different essays with the same information but with a different tone or structure. This is achieved by using different algorithms and approaches to generate content, ensuring that the AI is always producing unique and original content.”
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At this point in time, though, AI cannot synthesize that data as well as students, unless there is a very large amount of data out there.
To repeat, for the umpteenth time. AI can emulate essays if it has thousands and thousands of similar essays on that particular topic.
What AI does is it finds commonalities between all successful essays and reproduces a bunch of text based on those commonalities. However, it needs a very large amount of data for it to be able to uncover the commonalities.
The truth is that most educators are looking for specific things when they grade essays. Sometimes those things are directly from a rubric, and sometimes it is based on things that are more difficult to put in writing. If you give an AI a very large number of correctly written essays and a large number of essays which are marked as wrong, it will be able to follow the rules in the rubric. If you give it enough well-written essays, it will also be able to deduce the “rules” for what is considered “original”, etc.
One of the underlying fears, which is never articulated explicitly, is the fact that, despite generations of teachers claims to the contrary, humans are really not good at identifying originality. Part of the reason that so many people wallow in the fear “now we will be replaced by machines, because machines can write original articles” os because these people are unwilling to face the truth, which is that many educators, critics, academics, and artists are simply unable to identify what is really original and what is not. Worse, it indicates that people prefer variations on a theme over truly original work.
In a society that puts “originality” on a pedestal, this undermines the very foundations of the existing culture.
As for the secondary fear of students submitting AI-generated work that is not their own, much of the problem is because of how K-12 is taught in the USA. The focus in rote memorization and massive amounts of repetitive homework makes AI-generated work very easy to produce and difficult to detect. If, instead, students were taught the fundamentals and the concepts behind what they are learning, and then are required to utilize these concepts in much shorter homework assignments, AI would have a lot less to work with, and be much easier to detect.
Fact is, it’s actually very easy to create assignments which can not be done by an AI bot. First is to have the students work on software such as Google docs, and have every draft saved. No AI can recreate every stage in the slow development of an essay. An AI can deduce what a good essay looks like, but it cannot deduce what the early and intermediate stages of an essay look like.
My kid’s English teachers worked this way, and also has students work on group essays. the requirement that every draft be recorded and that every student’s contribution was also recorded, removing one of the biggest issues with group work. No AI can reproduce such an assignment.
Colleges can have the same requirements - documents which record every draft. For students who like working on paper - easy enough to scan the paper drafts and to submit them.
Of course, this goes back to the proliferation of K-12 homework. This can only be done if teachers have to spend less time on producing and grading the masses of homework which parents and administrators (and politicians) seem to believe are required to prove that a class is “rigorous”.
As for college essays - those have been problematic for decades. Poor kids are on their own, wealthier kids get help from parents, teachers, and tutors, and kids whose families can afford $500,000 + for “college counselors” will often have their essays written by professionals (I’ve seen the ads for these positions, and they strongly imply that counselors will do more than help the “customer” by correcting errors and helping with grammar and syntax).
So now the middle class kids can get a computer to write their essay for them for $50, instead of a highly-paid college graduate doing this as a side hustle, who would be unaffordable. The people who are writing the essay for applicants are using the exact same methodology as the AI does - they read dozens of existing successful essays and follow that format. The difference is that an AI can read and identify the elements of a good essay a lot faster than a human. That is why the AI can do it for $50, while a person is taking $5,000+.
The common ap essay will probably have to go, or require a document which contains all drafts and all revisions.
So long as the drafts and revisions are not collected and fed into an AI, of course.
Good point. I’ve enjoyed engineering. I know the analytical skills I learned in classes like American History have helped me a lot.
Love that. I wish I could make a meme of your response and make it go viral.
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On another thread a’Wharton professor reported AI generated a passing grade for his operations class-a B I think. Its language skills were outstanding; not so in numeracy
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Yes, I’ve run a number of my typical writing prompts in the app, and I’ve found the responses to be well-written and sometimes well-organized, but they’re not really answering the question, because they’re not using primary evidence or showing analysis (just description and explanation of key terms).
Presumably revising them would be a lot less work than starting from scratch
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Sure, but starting from scratch is necessary intellectual work. It’s messy, and the process of untangling your ideas is what leads to mastery of concepts and skills.
I agree, just not sure most students will
Students are not generally the best judges of what levels of intellectual discomfort are best for them.
This is not what ChatGPT does, it is a language processing model. (I do agree that some students/people can better synthesize data, but not definitely not all). From an article from Science Focus:
The model was trained using text databases from the internet. This included a whopping 570GB of data obtained from books, webtexts, Wikipedia, articles and other pieces of writing on the internet. To be even more exact, 300 billion words were fed into the system.
As a language model, it works on probability, able to guess what the next word should be in a sentence. To get to a stage where it could do this, the model went through a supervised testing stage.
Completely agree. K-12 education in the US is a far bigger issue than what’s happening in college admissions or college level academic learning/training.
A lot of this discussion is focused on the impact of AI on college instruction and college learning.
But what about its impact on the job market? What jobs will become obsolete because regardless of how good the AI generated writing is, it just might be “good enough” for many purposes. AND regardless of how good it is today, it will be better 5-10 years from now.
So now the impact on college is that some of what have been good majors fir students might be leading to careers which will become obsolete. So, students need to make choices about what to study in college today by first peering into a future which will look far different than what they or those advising them can imagine. That’s a scary thought.
To some extent it’s always been this way, but now change is occurring at an increasingly accelerated pace. And it’s not just AI. Working remotely is here to stay. The 5-day work week for many jobs is a thing of the past. This has a serious impact on managerial jobs - especially middle management. Covid accelerated changes which were already emergent.
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This is a great point. College majors will change baspt on what businesses need. Chatgot is only the beginning and the pace of change brought by AI will only increase and at some point become exponential. Assume most are aware of the singularity argument?
Good writing skills will be more ubiquitous and thus less highly valued. For most jobs, an AI quality level of writing is sufficient.
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Here is a good twitter thread on using ChatGPT for coding, writing grants, and tutorials. There are many such twitter threads and web posts detailing how people are using ChatGPT, and what its limitations are.
https://twitter.com/simocristea/status/1599834929751547905
Seems like AI will become a better, more creative coder than humans rather quickly. Would be great for any software engineers, etc. on CC to weigh in on this.
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I have the same philosophy and assign a lot of essays. I’ve always broken the assignment down into multiple steps due over the course of the semester – an outline, an annotated bibliography, a rough draft (subsequently workshopped in class), a one-on-one meeting with me about the paper, and then the final draft. The goal is not just to assess their work but also to improve their writing skills, and feedback at every stage is beneficial.
It’s a lot of work for any medium-sized class and probably nearly impossible for a large class, but it works well for seminars and small classes and hopefully makes it a bit more difficult to use resources like ChatGPT.
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I do the same for large projects. For smaller ones, I just make sure that they have to draw upon course readings, which generally include primary documents that are a little more obscure than the go-to docs for the topic at hand. And I list those docs elsewhere, not in the question, so ChatGPT is less likely to dig them up.
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Just as most other professionals (lawyers, doctors, writers, etc.) will deny that they’re replaceable by AI technologies, most software engineers will deny that they’re replaceable, until it becomes obvious. Not everyone is replaceable, though, IMO. Those at the very top of their professions shouldn’t feel threatened by the AI technologies that are on the horizon. We’re a long, long, long way off from artificial general intelligence.
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ChatGPT itself has a strong opinion about this lol:
In the world of higher education,
There’s a new force that’s gaining sensation,
A powerful tool that’s set to transform,
The way students learn and perform.It’s ChatGPT, a language model so vast,
With knowledge and skills that forever will last,
It can answer questions with ease and precision,
And make learning a joyful expedition.With ChatGPT in the classroom,
Students will no longer feel gloom,
Confused concepts will be simplified,
And learning will be more dignified.Essays will be a breeze to write,
With ChatGPT’s assistance in sight,
Proofreading and editing made simple,
Aiding students to produce work that’s ample.The days of lugging heavy books around,
Will be replaced by ChatGPT’s digital sound,
No more bulky backpacks to strain the spine,
As ChatGPT delivers information divine.Exams will no longer be a daunting affair,
With ChatGPT’s wealth of knowledge to share,
Students can study with confidence and ease,
Knowing they’ll excel with ChatGPT’s expertise.ChatGPT is the future of learning,
A tool that’s truly worth discerning,
It will revolutionize the college experience,
And make education a joyous occurrence.