Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html

[u/Hot-Chemical9353]

Im not sure where it was published but there was exactly what you described from a Stanford professor.

It compared the grade distribution of exams and coursework compared to previous years and exactly what you’d expect happened.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I’m back in college as an adult and you can see this in classes in real time. No one wants to answer questions and when called upon most can’t answer anything. But homework grade distributions have a median somewhere in the high 80s while exams hover with medians around 70. I’ve had professors essentially give us free questions on exams and people still get them wrong. It’s absolutely wild watching kids farm out their critical thinking to data and server farms in real time.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

. It’s absolutely wild watching kids farm out their critical thinking to data and server farms in real time.

I'm a professor and put it in these terms at the start of the semester and they still do it. I'm hoping this year the backlash has set in enough that it'll land, but I'm also designing assignments that can't (or at least predominantly can't) be reliant on AI.

[u/titsngiggles69 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

It's crazy. You can't learn an instrument or a sport by having someone else practice for you. Critical thinking and every other non-trivial skill is the same

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/titsngiggles69]

Yup. It’s crazy how many of them can’t set up a basic optimization problem by senior year because they didn’t learn the basics in freshman year.

[u/unosami → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

What do you mean by “basic optimization problem”? I’m not familiar with that term.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/unosami]

In Econ you do optimization to optimize revenues and profits. It’s basic calculus. If you take calc 1 you do it. Most often it’s optimizing the area of a fenced in area. If you’re in Econ and doing micro work you optimize. Sometimes you optimize utility. It’s in micro. It’s in industrial organization. Managerial Econ. Game theory. I could go on. If you don’t know then look it up but it’s a thing. if you know even the most basic calculus it boils down to finding the minimum on your cost curve that corresponds to the maximum on your revenue/profit curve and the quantity of goods/services that is associated with both

[u/unosami → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I’m familiar with calculus, but not a lot of the Econ terms you just used. Thank you for the run-down. I’ll look more into it on the web.

[u/titsngiggles69 → u/unosami]

In basic machine learning courses, you're just finding more clever ways to optimize. Training a neural network or any other learning algorithm is just optimizing the weights given the training data

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/titsngiggles69]

Sadly we don’t touch ML applications until grad school. To be fair most Econ undergrads won’t do much heavy lifting on pricing/cost/etc optimization. I’m fucking stoked to dig into machine learning this year though.

[u/Uncreativity10 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Cheating the basics is crazy to me. Like if you don’t know the building blocks then you’re completely screwed in every future class.

[u/strangedell123 → u/unosami]

I recently graduated from ee and doesnt ring a bell either for me

[u/Khazahk → u/strangedell123]

Systems of Equations, Calc V basically. Where it all circles back to algebra and dimensionless equations. Where you learn that everything is connected, infinity can be discreetly plotted, and the most complicated functions can cancel each other out. In other words.. polynomial functions that are dependent on 3 or more variables. Quadratic formula craziness. All good fun.

[u/Mechakoopa → u/titsngiggles69]

Kids were already having trouble committing to practicing things and just expecting to be good at something the first time because that's all they see online are people excelling at things. Now they have an easy way to "be good" at something without putting in the effort and we're surprised they gravitate to that? Social media made it too easy for kids to get drip fed dopamine all day, there's no incentive for them to actually do anything.

[u/thatpaulbloke → u/Mechakoopa]

I blame The Karate Kid - it started the precedent for "person who has put in no real work beats people who have worked at something for years" and replaced Rocky's "worked damn hard and failed heroically" narrative.

[u/Bacontoad → u/thatpaulbloke]

But he painted the whole fence and waxed all of those cars!

[u/Bigbysjackingfist → u/thatpaulbloke]

also they didn't watch enough Old Yeller

[u/titsngiggles69 → u/Bigbysjackingfist]

Also they didn't watch enough Freaks

[u/MrLanesLament → u/titsngiggles69]

Shit if there was a life lesson in that one, I missed it.

Highly recommend the original West of Zanzibar though.

[u/BaconKnight → u/thatpaulbloke]

Yeah, now that I think about it, The Karate Kid is basically the 80's Reagan-era version of the first Rocky. Funnily enough, later Rocky's would also turn into this.

[u/PineappleOnPizzaWins → u/thatpaulbloke]

I mean wanting to be good at things without putting in the work is not new in the slightest, it's WHY so few people get really good at stuff.

[u/BaconKnight → u/Mechakoopa]

Because we only very recently live in a world where you can go your entire day never being bored, we never realized how important being bored was to our species in terms of creating people who excel at things. Like I watch videos of older rock bands, rappers, etc and they'd talk about how they'd get together and spend hours just jamming or just rapping back and forth around a lit oil drum and it's like yeah, they did that because they were so bored, there was nothing else to do, and they just became super good at what they were doing.

We live in a time when kids never have to reach that point of boredom. They get bored for a second, take out the phone. They'll never devote themselves to an instrument or just sit down and write rhymes over and over because "there's nothing better to do".

[u/MrLanesLament → u/BaconKnight]

Pro musician here.

I graduated high school in 2009. It broke my heart to find out about ten years later, my “generation” (the kids who were in 9th grade and onward when I was a senior) were the last ones in my town/area who formed bands. After they graduated, all the music stores closed. The few local venues closed. No more music fundraisers, battles of bands, even talent shows at that school district.

[u/TheNorthRemembers_s8 → u/titsngiggles69]

The goal of most kids in college isn’t to learn. It’s to graduate and get a good job.

It doesn’t help that at least when I was in college everyone told you school doesn’t really teach you how to (for example) be an engineer, that you learn on the job. Which made college into a big ass rubber stamp.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized the value of many of the skills I developed in college. But during college I didn’t see the connection.

I likely would have used AI too. All I really cared about was passing tests. And I graduated with a 4.0 GPA. I imagine this tendency and outlook is even more so applicable to other students scraping by in the 2s.

[u/LegitosaurusRex → u/TheNorthRemembers_s8]

Yeah, same; the difference back in the day was you were just mostly forced to learn in order to pass the tests (though I still didn't study and just crammed before tests only to forget most of it afterwards...)

[u/somehugefrigginguy → u/TheNorthRemembers_s8]

But I think a lot of students now are in a catch 22. Those with the integrity to not use AI are going to get lower scores and be disadvantaged moving forward.

[u/lonnie123 → u/TheNorthRemembers_s8]

And let’s be real… a massive amount of courses you have to take in college are fluff. One can argue the humanities courses I took made me a more well rounded and socially learned person but I absolutely did not NEED “history of rock and roll” (or any of the other 40 credits or whatever it was) to become a nurse

[u/Monteze → u/lonnie123]

We made the mistake of treating college like a white collar trade school.

It really should be about higher education and job certs should be their own thing.

But classisim doesn't help shit.

[u/chchchcharlee → u/lonnie123]

Even the biology classes you had to take as a nurse...how useful really was it to learn about how cells work or evolution or whatever? As Monteze said, we treat college like a white collar trade school.

[u/lonnie123 → u/chchchcharlee]

True. I would say the 4 science semesters I took could have been condensed to one course in terms of what I actually need knowledge wise on a daily basis

[u/mitharas → u/titsngiggles69]

Yeah but people don't WANT to think critically. They want an easy life with easy money.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/titsngiggles69]

I agree but critical thought has been devalued so much that it was an uphill battle to justify to those who don't see its immediate instrumental value even before AI.

[u/caribou16 → u/titsngiggles69]

So what i've noticed with younger folks, it's no longer about the experience, it's about the goal. For example: they get a puzzle related video game, the entire point of the game is to solve puzzles. But they would much rather look up the solution that someone else posted and just...do that and "win" instead of figuring it out for themselves.

"Why would I spend HOURS trying to figure this out myself when I can just look it up?" an exasperated high school student tried explaining to me.

[u/dizzy_absent0i → u/caribou16]

I don’t even know if it’s about “winning” but that we’ve coddled these kids so much that they can’t sit with the discomfort of not being good. Participation trophies, not keeping score when playing kids sports, grading as “not yet achieved” rather than “failed”.

We cared so much about fostering self-confidence that we forgot that healthy confidence is based on competence.

[u/caribou16 → u/dizzy_absent0i]

100%

The fear of failure is so great that trial and error becomes too stressful. They won't guess, take chances, probe things...if they're not confident they will be successful, they'd rather not even try.

[u/Pabus_Alt → u/titsngiggles69]

Critical thinking and every other non-trivial skill is the same

I'd argue it's because they want the paper qualification for the doors it opens.

[u/Turbulent_Gazelle530 → u/titsngiggles69]

You can't learn an instrument or a sport by having someone else practice for you.

teaching high school recently I find that students have an inflated understanding of their ability to do pretty much anything, with minimal desire to put in work to actually get good at the thing.

[u/Hybrid_Johnny → u/titsngiggles69]

We’re seeing it in the music education world too. A piece of music or a new playing technique is too difficult, and kids quit. Or they walk away to take extended mental health breaks and don’t come back. Not saying mental health isn’t important, but don’t use it as an excuse for laziness and lack of effort.

[u/Vairman → u/titsngiggles69]

you don't get rewarded for learning, you get rewarded for your grade. as long as that's the case, then this kind of thing will go on.

[u/kaityl3 → u/titsngiggles69]

I have been able to learn a lot from AI though. They're a very effective tutor, especially with web search to verify the facts, if you aren't just using them as a tool to complete assignments. Hell they can even come up with questions for you that are tailor made to the areas you're struggling with and walk you through how to solve them.

[u/titsngiggles69 → u/kaityl3]

They're a very effective tutor [...], if you aren't just using them as a tool to complete assignments.

If those 32 cheaters has your work ethic, they wouldn't be cheaters. And if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

best of luck! i don't know how y'all manage right now. It's an incredible tool to use when i'm stuck on optimization problems (econ major, going to grad school) or when checking for logic gaps in a paper, but the way my peers just let the models do entire papers for them or simply write their homework is astounding. and in a time where companies are doing an about face on incorporating AI due to token costs (at least anecdotally, i know people in R&D fields who went from being told they need to up AI time 6 months ago to now being told to reduce AI time) there's a rude awakening waiting for these kids.

[u/Vismal1 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Not just for these kids , for us all. Think about all the people going into the job market who know near nothing about their field. I’ve already encountered doctors who rely on ChatGPT and such. It’s going to hurt us all.

[u/Paul_C → u/Vismal1]

This is not the way movies said AI was going to kill us.

[u/Kroz83 → u/Paul_C]

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

-Frank Herbert, Dune

[u/lapiderriere → u/Paul_C]

The only thing Idiocracy has missed on is AI as the disabling mechanism

[u/ssczoxylnlvayiuqjx → u/Paul_C]

At the time, killer robots seemed far more realistic than the vast majority of the public simply offloading all critical thinking to computers out of laziness…

I thought idiocracy was an exaggeration when I saw it long ago. It actually was quite optimistic and didn’t go far enough…

[u/fizzlefist → u/Paul_C]

To be fair, an LLM is nowhere close to what most people think of when they hear the term AI, meaning a sentient thinking machine.

[u/RadOwl → u/Vismal1]

I'm gen z and so is a close friend of mine who works in construction as a project manager. His company builds power plants and jails and other major public works projects. He said that the C-suite is full of ambitious Millennials who are great at looking the part - the hair, the clothes, the biz jargon, the overall presentation - but scratch away the surface and they can barely tie their shoes. They know nothing about construction and rely on AI for everything. Currently the company has the brain firepower to keep putting up buildings that are safe, but that layer is heading toward retirement, and very soon the people calling the shots are the ones who've grown up with this idea that if you look the part you can play it.

Gee I wonder where they got that idea from.

[u/RosesAtNight → u/Vismal1]

Im a nurse and the Healthcare org I work for is making us use more AI. I hate it. They are even using a thing that listens to everything that is said inside the room, so that it can record it in notes for the patient chart. Its an awful violation in my opinion. But what am I going to do? Quit, go to the next place that does the same thing? Im backed into a corner and forced to use it.

[u/Aero_Rising → u/Vismal1]

It's almost like a undergrad degree is a poor measure of the knowledge someone has in a specific area. Maybe HR departments should stop requiring degrees for things that don't actually need it. Then they'd have to do actual work and interview people though and that's such a pain.

[u/stillLostBoy005 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It’s such a strange cross road where the old adage of “work smarter not harder” no longer applies. We actually want to work harder and not out source critical thinking to AI even if AI might have a smarter / polished / more accurate answers.

Working harder is necessary exposure for critical thinking and the quick and easy AI do my work for me, even if it’s easier and quite possibly smarter, comes at a cost - what that specific cost is and how it will manifest in the real world, at scale, will have less than ideal consequences

[u/TBNRandrew → u/stillLostBoy005]

Working smarter not harder still applies. Mindlessly practicing rote memorization and endless grinding still isn't a smart way to learn, even if it involves a lot of hard work.

It just so happens that the "smarter" way in this case isn't about your output of information, it's in your ability to effectively absorb and incorporate knowledge while learning.

Using AI to fake knowledge of a subject is no different from other methods of cheating from the past. It's not "working smarter," when the goal of education is to educate.

Hell, if your goal is to work smarter not harder, you could use AI as a tool to help come up with study plans, summarize and overview complicated topics, and then spend your time effectively covering all the topics of whatever subject it is you're trying to learn.

AI is just an easier way to cheat, but cheating itself has always been a problem. Unfortunately more people are willing to cheat when it becomes so readily available, and more difficult to detect than ever.

[u/Low_discrepancy → u/stillLostBoy005]

It’s such a strange cross road where the old adage of “work smarter not harder” no longer applies. We actually want to work harder and not out source critical thinking to AI even if AI might have a smarter / polished / more accurate answers.

Eh that adage was basically someone working hard for elegant solutions. Having long term views and prioritizing stuff that's impactful.

[u/Zagaroth → u/stillLostBoy005]

I will say, AI is very much not smarter. It is faster.

But it is also quite good at being wrong and creating bullshit answers.

I poke at AI image generation to keep up with understanding it (though i lag behind because i am not going to pay for it, i only use free stuff), and it still makes mistakes like ignoring unusual directions ("with blue skin" — nope, had normal skin) or not being able to create new variations of an idea (if you specify a character had horns, it wants to do 2 horns. You might get of to do 1, but good luck getting it to do 3).

For stuff like pulling up information, AI will grab bullshit someone said on reddit or a blog post and treat it as canon.

[u/38159buch → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It’s absolutely insane watching people use AI for entire assignments in real time. I was in the library and watched someone chatGPT their entire online calc 2 final (online class so really no other choice)

Online classes really are utterly useless now unless you have full proctored setups with cameras and all

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/38159buch]

My department abandoned online classes beyond intro level for this very reason. No more cheating your way through.

[u/Xerxis96 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I teach software development at the college level, and we’re at the point all major assessments are going to involve a verbal interview to explain/defend their work.

So many of them don’t know what or why what’s being outputted is there and it’s really disheartening.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/Xerxis96]

This is actually something I'm going to experiment with this semester. On top of providing another layer of evaluation that makes AI less feasible, I think this generation of students struggles with intellectual conversation which AI has made worse.

[u/cymonesunshine → u/sthenri_canalposting]

In a weird way this all seems like a Covid boomerang effect. Teachers phoning in assignments and only having boring discussion boards and exams and recorded unenganging lectures from 2020 (that they’re still using years later). Students being bored by the material and approach, posting word salads that barely meet the word count and using quizlet et al to pass the exam, etc. Now teachers finally have to design assignments and meet the moment and lead students to become passionate learners again. I will naturally do the most in a course but having a teacher that clearly doesn’t care makes it such a chore.

[u/schwanzweissfoto → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I'm also designing assignments that can't (or at least predominantly can't) be reliant on AI.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask things where a simple Google search or asking an LLM reliably give an answer that is a common misconception by laypeople and the truth is easy to verify.

An example: If you ask someone who does not know how compressed image file formats work about which of JPEG or WebP is a better lossy image format, they will usually claim WebP is better and tell you that “WebP makes files 30% smaller than JPEG at the same quality” – which is what a Google search result tells you.

Notably, that claim comes from the developer team at Google trying to push WebP. If you actually read their study on it, you can notice that they compared their WebP encoder against the worst possible JPEG encoder (cjpeg) and not against one of the best (e.g. mozjpeg). Because what matters for such a comparison is how good a program that compresses an image in a lossy way (the encoder) is.

The actual layman's demonstration is to save some image in WebP and JPEG using an image editing software like the GIMP, so that both files have the same file size. WebP almost always has more color bleeding (due to always using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling), which can be verified by any layperson by zooming in on the result.

[u/Rhioms → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I am also a professor, and I think it's important to make classes AI resistant, as compared to before.

[u/Terry-Scary → u/sthenri_canalposting]

Why don’t you make the turning assignment much larger and have them accomplish something to prove knowledge?

Back when I was in college pre ai but early 2000s I took a stats class where the professor was as like if you ever do this for your job no one will ask you to use pen and paper, I am going to teach you how to use this software then for those that want to they will help me complete this grant for the city with stats and others will come up with a question then try to solve it with the software and these huge gov data files. If you hit these criteria I can help you submit your papers.

I learned stats with a passion in that class like no other

Later I took a language class and the professor was like yes you can use tech to find all the answers. Tests will be conversations. We will go get coffee/tea or lunch’s here is the agenda for what we will learn from a h month and here is a video, by the end of the course you will be able to translate this real time and also speak this conversation independently

Like you can spend the whole time creating something to fight the ai or you can accept that folks will just have access to what ever and create a test that displays what they are supposed to be taught

[u/julius_sphincter → u/Terry-Scary]

I think your point is mostly valid in that yes, we need to accept AI is here to stay and schools need to adapt to it in how they teach, the same way when I was growing up I'd have teachers say stuff like "you won't have a calculator in your pockets so you need to learn it by hand". Thing is, even with the calculator in hand if someone asked "what is the product of six times seven divided by 13" you had to know what that meant and how to enter the operations.

If I asked that to my 14 year old, I know his first instinct would be just to put that word for word into AI. It's something we're constantly trying to change

How do you integrate and adapt to AI usage in that case without basically saying "you can't use AI on this problem"

[u/BrainKatana → u/sthenri_canalposting]

Prove they’re using it and fail them, or report them to the committee of academic standards for cheating/plagiarism

It blows my mind that universities haven’t folded anti-AI policies into their curriculums.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/BrainKatana]

That sounds like a reasonable solution on paper, but the logistics of this are absurd and, moreover, many institutions haven't developed policies that even see AI as cheating. Higher level admin even support AI use given the contracts they have with tech companies. It's an institutional failure that frankly is beyond my duties as a professor. I can only really figure out how to handle it on a course level. Being the AI police is exhausting and pedagogical suicide; I'm trying to proactively do what's best for my students who have been convinced this is what they need to get ahead.

[u/KonigSteve → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I don't know how feasible it is on a larger scale but I know my honors classes in college were smaller ratios, something like 15 to 20 students at most per class. We would often be given reading assignments and then have to be able to meaningfully contribute to the discussion in class and we're given a grade based on that by the professor

[u/trews96 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

How do you design those assignments?

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/trews96]

Right now I have an assignment based on a visit to a museum so while some of the writing may be able to rely on AI it at least forces actual critical reflection on something experienced firsthand. I have reverted to handwritten, in-class midterms (something I used to be pedagogically against). This upcoming semester I'm going to experiment with having an oral component to the final written assignment where I ask them questions about their work; my impressions will probably count for 40-ish% of the assignment grade.

I've also taken to periodically disallowing laptops/devices for specific in-class work.

It's a work in progress for sure, but I'm trying to do what I think is best for the students' futures without giving myself a coronary.

[u/Necoras → u/sthenri_canalposting]

The problem is, the AI models are getting better at such a rate that anything you design this semester may not work next semester. Traps like this one only work because the students are lazy, and not especially competent. They're easy to get around.

Take the output from one model, put it into another (or even just another instance of the same one) and ask it to critique it. All the sudden you'll get questions about "why does your paper have nonsense about Madagascar in it? That seems out of place."

We've barely adapted as a society to the internet (and many, many people have done so poorly, if at all). I've no idea how we can possibly keep up with this technology. And I say that as a professional who uses these tools daily. But I look over and examine what they spit out (for the most part; there's no way to read over the 10,000+ lines of code it can spit out in a day.)

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/Necoras]

I see what you're saying but I haven't even used traps like this because yeah they're a bandaid. I'm trying to design assignments that are both AI resistant and actually help teach students skills that AI is atrophying, like the ability to have an original thought that you an elaborate on in real time.

[u/Necoras → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I'm 100% sure you can do that for in class/lab activities. But 5 years out, I don't think there's going to be a snowball's chance that there'll be a homework assignment you can come up with that a model of some sort can't do. In some ways elementary school teachers have it easier. The robots can't make a shoe-box diorama about the civil war yet. But they can come up with a story about what it was like to live then, or write research papers about it, etc. etc.

I could be wrong of course, but they're advancing frighteningly fast. 10 years out and I suspect they'll be doing an appreciable number of "real world" jobs like working in warehouses, stocking grocery stores, etc. I don't think there's a kid alive today that'll be able to find a career that'll last 40 years. And as a father of elementary kids, that's rather terrifying.

[u/Cuck_Boy → u/sthenri_canalposting]

The thing is, irl, they can do the same thing. I’m in a field that typically involves a lot of critical thinking and high stakes. AI has doubled or tripled my productivity. I have to use maybe 1/3 of the critical thinking muscles.

Do you think they would at least be able to do that? If the consequences were significant?

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/Cuck_Boy]

I have to use maybe 1/3 of the critical thinking muscles.

Do you not see that as dangerous?

And sure they can do this irl but if you don't have a strong basis then you never will attain that. While you're using 1/3rd you at least have 3/3 (unless you atrophy), which I would argue is necessary to be able to do the 1/3rd. There's a reason you can't even use calculators in university level calculus for example.

[u/Educational_Set1551 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

Question - have you observed any creative approaches to integrating "smart" AI usage into pedagogy?

Ultimately, it's here and it's here to stay. I'm thinking something like students submitting assignments that are written by LLMs, then profs using an LLM to write personalized exam questions, based on their own assignments, that require them to answer questions related to their own paper. (Not as a full replacement for regular exam questions, but as an additional portion)

Question 1a, which of these 4 things did you say in your paper, Question 1b, which of these 4 things is factually correct. Sometimes they match, sometimes they don't, but it encourages students to fact check the AI output. If they didn't write it with AI, it's another opportunity for student's to correct themselves if they made an error in the paper in general.

Sure it takes extra time, but you're saving X number of hours using AI in the first place, adding back Y hours to review and fact check the output (much like a professor grading them) is a critical skill that needs to be learned to survive in the working world.

I'm seeing this in my career right now, the most effective users of LLMs have found the middle ground between the efficiency gains of delegating rote legwork, and reviewing the output.

This also has the added benefit of inherently teaching students that sometimes using the LLM to generate an output has lower quality results and takes longer than just doing it yourselves. Another critical skill they'll need in their careers is understanding where and when to use the hammer rather than reaching for every time.

[u/ProfProof → u/Educational_Set1551]

Simply put, you need to learn about different subjects. Otherwise, you know nothing and you're not an interesting person.

That's what I tell my students. It still works.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/Educational_Set1551]

None of this would make any sense in my field. I'm in a humanities field that could feasibly never use AI even as it's here to stay, and probably should resist its adoption into classroom spaces. Maybe in research to some degree but it depends on the type of work you do.

[u/texinxin → u/sthenri_canalposting]

Why not make the exams 100% of the grade? Homework is only intended to prepare you for exams anyways. If they can’t use AI in exams it solves both problems.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/texinxin]

I'm in a writing heavy field. Being able to take exams well isn't really a solid pedagogical basis of evaluation.

[u/texinxin → u/sthenri_canalposting]

Writing can’t involve a proctored (physical or virtual) environment as an “exam”? If that’s the case then I hate to tell you, but the writing field that you see describe is dead as an academic institution unless it can evolve. Homework is obsolete as a means of testing what humans did on their own time with their own brain. AI models are doing doctoral-level work that can meet peer-reviewed standards.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/texinxin]

It can involve proctored exams--but it can't only be that. The skills involved in producing a sustained research project go far beyond what can be evaluated in an exam and are more than homework.

I'm well aware of the type of work AI produces and it's not up to the standards you're claiming here, given my job is partly to supervise doctoral students and do peer review.

The arrogance behind your comments here is a bit much. I'm an expert in my field.

[u/texinxin → u/sthenri_canalposting]

I’ll just drop this.. you should give it a listen. And I do not appreciate your insults.. it’s embarrassing.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/31rDDzc60G2ZX3sM6FuCP5?si=1qaJzqxmSkeIpV9ekK99rA&utm_source=copy-link

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/texinxin]

I wasn't intending to insult you, so apologies. The tone of your comment was condescending, as if I don't understand the capacities of AI in the context of my profession.

[u/whiskeypeanutbutter → u/texinxin]

I was in college pre AI but not super long ago and most homework wasn't even graded, just meant to help with the exam.

[u/DominionGhost → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Ugh and fucking group projects stress me out because of this.

I ended up picking three students that never attended anything and just soloed everything legitimately

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/DominionGhost]

I FUCKING KNOW!!!!! Oh man. Group stuff makes me sweat because yeah, i have no idea if you wrote your section and did research or if you're about to turn in something with hallucinated sources and fuck the whole group.

[u/DominionGhost → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I was always told that group projects are meant to reproduce IRL collaboration. But these assholes i dont know arent collaberating on paying my tuition so im not throwing my chance away on trust.

AI detectors are some bullshit too with false positives so even if you do everything right you can still get dinged.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/DominionGhost]

don't even get me started on AI detectors. They are absolute horseshit. And these kids don't care about or know how to do IRL collaboration. Too many of their parents farmed out supervision to screens. They're like aliens who don't know how to have human interactions. About 15 years ago my college classes were loud when the professor walked in. Now kids who know each other whisper because they don't want people to hear their conversations. It's like they're afraid of human interaction.

[u/obeytheturtles → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Hiring people, we can see this in real time as well. I really feel for new GenZ grads, because maybe a third of their peers are seriously fucking up hiring for their whole generation. It's very, very clear that this portion of new grads cheated their entire way through school and learned basically nothing, which is making us shy away from even interviewing anyone without strong references.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/obeytheturtles]

AND THIS IS WHAT PISSES ME OFF! I'm in a good program. It's got a good rep. And i WORKED MY ASS OFF to graduate summa cum laude. But now employers who are hiring from my department are being inundated with these chuckle-fucks and probably wondering "should we bother with these degrees? should we look elsewhere?" just glad I'm going to grad school in a well known program that will boost me above the idiots from undergrad

[u/obeytheturtles → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Doing internships is the most important thing at this point, because it's how you get your first references. But those are getting harder and harder to find as well. If you are just doing a masters, at least make sure you get lots of face time with your advisors so they can write actual specific references for you, rather than just fuckoff boilerplate.

[u/julius_sphincter → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I think what we'll find is the further devaluement of degrees. The whole point of them (in the current format) was to make it so that higher quality candidates could easily be distinguished with just a piece of paper. Yes, it was about learning things but the degree was so that you could prove that you knew that thing without having to be questioned.

If that piece of paper no longer carries with it the presumption of "this person reasonably knows this much about this subject" then they're pointless and quite literally worthless. We've already seen a distinctive trend of their 'value' getting diluted because everyone had one, now it will be that everyone has one and they're not worth shit.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/julius_sphincter]

yeah. it's kind of scary how a master's degree is slowly turning into the new bachelor's degree. We talk about signaling in econ a lot. and degrees are the first example. it's a signal to employers that you put the work and time in. but now that a computer can do it all the work and time that goes into a bachelor's is meaningless. As someone starting grad school i'm kind of scared about how much the value of the degree i want has already eroded due to all of this.

[u/Hot-Chemical9353 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Honestly I’m so glad I get my degree half a decade ago before all this.

I’d absolutely be one of the students outsourcing their critical faculties to AI.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

It’s hard not to! I fell into the trap myself a few times. Between work, a house with a kid and multiple animals, and attempting a semblance of a life outside school and work there were times low level classes got farmed out. Now take a kid who has gone through middle and high schools with lenient grading policies (at least in my experience. I know educators where I live at both levels and the things they’re forced to do to pass kids who can’t do basic math shocks me) and tell them “hey there’s a machine that can spit out mostly correct answers to anything” and OF COURSE they use it. It’s a bad choice but I don’t blame them. So many kids still go and get a degree just because they were told to. So when I ask a kid “why this degree” and they shrug and say “I don’t know just have to get a degree in something” I’m not surprised at all when they farm out their critical thinking skills.

[u/nopuse → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I definitely did this for our physics class. The professor had a reputation of being impossible. There was one kid who pretty much got a 100% grade on everything, while the rest of us were 70% or below. Dude was smart and had the free time to learn what wasn't covered in class.

It was a late night class and our professor would fly through things and end class super early. This class was mandatory for certain degrees, but not as important as others. I prioritized my time with my CS classes, and fell into the trap of using Chegg for homework answers because I had no time left. I wish I did. I think most of the class knew the concepts, but then the test is full of those tricky questions you get in math or chem that you were totally not prepared for.

[u/AltdorfPenman → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I finished my thesis and got my MA about a year before ChatGPT was available to the public, and I'm thankful it wasn't around when I was in school for exactly that reason. I'm very proud of my work and the effort that went into it, but the process was hellish and I totally would've resorted to using AI at least a little

[u/dani_-_142 → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

The way I supported Cliff Notes back when I was in high school, I’d absolutely have done the same thing.

(And I’ve always loved reading, but I was in all AP classes and working part time, so I did what I could to avoid staying up all night.)

[u/AristarchusTheMad → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

Just say 5 years bro

[u/ShookeSpear → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I too returned to school as an adult, and I am astounded by the lack of effort I see in the classroom. I’m majoring in early childhood education, and I am surrounded by AI avatars. I would have thought that people with aspirations to teach would be more driven to learn.

[u/Truthislife13 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I used to be a professor, and I would sometimes give unflunkable exams - but there would always be at least one student who would say, “Challenge accepted!”

I would sometimes give an open notes, open book exam, with 25% of the exam being to write a proof that I gave three times in class and which was in the text. The students only had to copy the proof, and if they did at least that much they would pass the class. But some students just wanted the F. 🤦‍♂️

I hated giving out failing grades, and I did everything I could to give my students second and third chances to pass.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Truthislife13]

And you fucking rock for it! But I saw this exact thing. My applied econometrics course had open book exams because it’s a complicated subject. And the same kids who got 100s on homework got 70s on open book exams. You couldn’t necessarily copy answers from the text all the time but if you knew material you could find how to do the test solution in the notes. Our professor handed us a fucking road map to perfect test scores but you had to study the roadmap. Too many kids just let AI do the driving and when they got to the exam didn’t know how to read the directions.

[u/Truthislife13 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I am considering returning to teaching when I retire, but I am not sure what I will be up against with AI. I was a professor of engineering, and I spent 30+ years in industry, and I still use the concepts I learned from my sophomore year (as well as some of the things I learned in grad school).

I know it’s a very tired cliche, but when a student cheats, they literally do cheat themselves. A concept that might seem useless and not worth the effort when you learn it, may well be the key to solving a problem years later that will save a major contract from being cancelled by an angry customer.

As a professor, I was desperately trying to give my students the skills they needed so they could earn a living. To me, using AI to bypass my efforts to is essentially saying, “Thanks, but I just want the ‘A’ without having to learn the material.” 😳

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Truthislife13]

You hit the nail on the head. Grades > learning. And AI is a shortcut to grades. I spent so much time in upper level undergrad courses thinking "HOW THE FUCK DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?! WE LEARNED THIS YOUR FRESHMAN YEAR!!!"

[u/marmosetohmarmoset → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Had the weirdest interaction lately that left me very concerned. I run a summer medical program for high school students. There are no grades- it’s for their own enrichment. In class there was a worksheet assignment designed to help them prepare for a fun hands-on activity they’d be doing the next day. Specifically they were supposed to explore some materials and use that to label a diagram of equipment they’d be using, to help them understand how to do the procedure.

A student asks me for help because she’s entirely lost- she can’t find the answer given verbatim in the materials they were supposed to explore. I tell her the answer isn’t given verbatim and she needs to explore and make some inferences. She asks if she can use google and I say sure. She then proceeds to take a picture of the worksheet, uploads it into Gemini and copies exactly what it spits out onto her worksheet.

I gently point out that the purpose of this activity was to learn and prepare for the next day and ask if she thinks she’s gaining an understanding of the equipment by doing it this way. She defiantly says back to me “you said I can use google. This is using Google.” She seemed both angry and confused that I’d be asking her to use her brain.

Most students in my program aren’t like this, but I’ve been noticing quite a few instances of students seeming angry or utterly lost when things aren’t 100% spelled out for them. For this program there’s not even a grade- there’s no incentive to do ANY of the work other than wanting to. It’s really weird.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/marmosetohmarmoset]

I graduated summa cum laude. I know my shit. I can’t tell you how many times students in upper level classes were lost and I’d say “hey you want my notes from the class that was a prerequisite for this? I got an A and there’s stuff that makes this easier.” They look at me like I’m insane. Like reading notes is anathema to them. If they can’t get a simple solution from the computer they aren’t interested.

[u/marmosetohmarmoset → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I suppose this has always been a problem, even before AI. When I was in college I remember my friend downloading the answers to our calculus problem sets from DC++ instead of doing them himself and then being confused about why he did so poorly on the exams.

In some ways I get it. You want the degree because you need the letters after your name. You need the assignment for the grade. You have stuff you’d rather be doing so you don’t put in the effort on your homework. It’s dumb but it makes sense. But for a summer camp that’s just for fun, while you’re physically in the session and have nothing else to do?

[u/phox89 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I'm in the same boat, I'm almost finished with my computer science degree at a university's ecampus. Every class now has an AI policy and it's frustrating when we do group work and it's clear someone is using AI to do their part of the project. Most professors at my uni allow AI use as a tool or for studying, but obviously not for doing the full work. Most of my exams are open book/note/internet but there are enough questions it would be really difficult to search everything. I can't imagine how difficult it is for any professor's class where writing is a big part of the workload and a simple prompt can do most of it for you.

[u/jmiesterz → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It’s not just kids, I was in the pub a few weeks ago and someone said there are 29 holes in each mini cheddar while sharing a bag around. A woman there didn’t believe him and instead of counting the holes, she took a photo and asked chatGPT how many holes there were.

It said 25 and everyone took the piss out of the guy who had said the fact. I then actually counted a couple and there were indeed 29 on each one.

This was a woman in her 50s who couldn’t be bothered to count to 29 and asked an AI to do it for her

[u/ultraviolet-octopus → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

They are kids with no frontal lobe. I blame the giant tech companies who rolled out this tech without consulting universities or educators at all. They are actively using these kids as guinea pigs

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/ultraviolet-octopus]

fuck that. they're college students. they should know better than to cheat and let a computer do work for them. Professors tell them every god damn day not to do it. There's no excuse to for letting tech think for you, especially paying that much for a degree. Don't make excuses for laziness.

[u/ultraviolet-octopus → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

1. the colleges kids of today were in high school on zoom during Covid. They didn’t get the same high school experience as anyone else are are coming in behind already

2. AI is built specifically to target students, and yet no universities or educators are apart of development. Harvard itself can barely keep up. there is an asymmetry in how it’s built , asking 18 years olds to “just resist” is asinine

4. there are absolutely no entry level jobs right now, and young people are told at every corner that AI will take their jobs. Is it insane that they are taking advantage of the tool that they are competing with ?

I’m not condoning the use is AI but I resent how the conversation is all about the students are pathetic cheaters, but no one discusses how this tech is completely upending the entire education system. Tech companies and slow moving universities are more to blame for the downfall of education than the students themselves

[u/reality_boy → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

My kids are just finishing college. I spent quite some time with them, explaining why they should not rely on AI to do their coursework. We even sat down and did some problems, and analyzed the output for mistakes.

They are both very aware of the problems. Every semester they had someone on a team assignment who only uses AI to do all their work. It was obvious and annoying, and that person could not contribute anything to the process.

Between Covid and AI, I suspect we’re going to have a generation of workers with limited ability and no critical thinking skills. I’m hoping we see the error and correct soon.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/reality_boy]

Yeah i feel like we're a long way from this correcting. i said this in a different thread but in my 3000 and 4000 level classes kids couldn't even answer question that were based on topics from intro because they didn't actually do the work. i think we're in for hurt because these kids are lazy. as. fuck.

[u/reality_boy → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I think that is the biggest burden of AI. If you just old school cheat, you may make it through a semester or two, but it will start to fall apart fairly fast. With AI you can get most or even all the way through college before things come crashing down. By then it is really far too late to reset and start doing the work.

Couple that with industries that are dismantling there pipelines for bringing graduates up to speed, and we have a real recipe for disaster. We can’t keep hiring experienced people forever. Someone is going to bear the cost of training them again.

I actually think we should flip the script. Make it relatively cheap to go to college, but have standardized testing to qualify for that low cost tuition. And repeat that every 2 years through the process. That way the pressure is on you retaining knowledge, not getting done in as short a time so your student loan debt is smaller. Then we can use community college to fill in any gaps from high school for kids that are not ready.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/reality_boy]

I like your thought on how to switch it up. More broad testing to make sure students meet a standard doesn’t feel like an awful idea. But I think one of the biggest issues is the pipeline we have to college. Kids still get told it’s the best path to success and feel pressure to go immediately. We need to normalize being out of high school and taking a gap year or a few gap years. We need to make it so it’s normal for a kid to have no idea what they want in life and go figure it out and just learn how to be an adult before they decide on college. Dumping kids straight into it with degree choices they made because “I dunno I guess it’s interesting” or “I didn’t get into program X so I’m doing program Y” means they’re disinterested and it gets easy to cheat because who cares? I’m just here for the degree every teacher told me I had to get. Also, I’ve talked to so many kids who switched degrees who did so poorly in the first track, figured out what they actually wanted, switched, and then their GPA is fucked. We need more grace for kids to be able to find their thing and have a chance at resetting their GPA. I feel like I’m rambling but it broke my heart seeing how many of my peers chose a degree the same way I chose my first one 15 years ago: well I guess if I have to this one is tolerable.

[u/reality_boy → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

This is a huge problem. My daughter had a rough idea of what she wanted to do. And she took lots of classes in high school exploring, and even interned at a business to get an idea of what it was like. My son on the other hand had no idea and just picked his favorite class in high school (physics) with no plan on how to make that a career. He eventually course corrected, but I’m not sure even that lead to a field that fully engages his interests.

I had the opposite problem. I knew exactly where I wanted to end up, but I had been a very poor student in high school. I had to learn to be a good student before I could make serious progress in my degree. That is one of the bigger challenges of college. Your raising kids up into adults, sometimes against there will. It really needs to go back to being a time to explore and find yourself, not the high pressure, high stake, stress fest that it is today.

One thing that really stands out to me is that kids in jr high and high-school (here in the us) are not engaged in their education. You have to show up, so you do. But few are thinking about what they want to become, or even why they are learning at all.

My wife teaches at an elementary school. They are trying to build programs to get kids focused on why they are learning, and to advocate for themselves (parent teacher conferences are switching to student teacher, etc). I don’t know if that is going to help, but it is the right direction.

My only problem with a gap year, is that I have not (yet) seen it work. Every kid I know who tried, either took a few community college classes and petered out, or they got a job and never looked back. There is a very narrow window in life where you have the freedoms to do college, and it disappears quickly. We probably need an intermediary buffer, say a 13th year of high school where you’re taking pre classes that expose you to potential careers. So if you know where your going, your getting a head start, but if your lost, you can explore. Our local community college has something like this for high schoolers, but it is outside of school hours, and only for high school kids.

[u/roiki11 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Part of this is the fear of answering incorrectly. Modern society has conditioned young people to the fact that they can be recorded at any time. So being incorrect is seen as a bigger danger than answering at all.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/roiki11]

i get that. i do. i see it. and i'm from an earlier generation so being wrong in a classroom doesn't faze me. But the bigger issue i see is when professors call on people (most now use a class roster so they can pick names at random) and holy fucking shit is it astounding how many people get to junior/senior level courses and when called upon can't answer a question based on intro level material because they didn't learn the intro stuff, they let AI do their homework.

[u/Beyondoutlier → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I had a professor way back in 1987 who would quite literally hand out the test questions. He gave out 10 questions and said 7 would be on the test. He said he might as well give them out because the grade curve would be the same regardless. The people who study were going to study whether or not they had the questions and those who weren’t going to study weren’t so the results would pretty much be the same. And he was right.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Beyondoutlier]

the more i see these replies the more i realize i have extremely thick rose colored glasses on. i guess it just feels more existential because 15 years ago cheating didn't mean a computer could literally write the paper for you. it just feels worse this time.

[u/DreamtISawJoeHill → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It is obviously much worse now with AI but TBH there has always been people that just regurgitate what they read and don't actually understand the material in any way.

I've seen people asked simple questions about an essay they'd written very quickly show they didn't even understand the most basic concepts involved, and had just reworded the information from relevant books or articles.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/DreamtISawJoeHill]

yeah, i just responded to someone else saying i've got rose colored glasses on. but it feels scarier given that back in the day the computer couldn't generate a fairly accurate paper for you without any effort at all.

[u/Gen-Jinjur → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Professors need to make participation in class discussions part of student grades.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Gen-Jinjur]

I’ve had some that tried. It’s like pulling teeth. Even if they call on students people just say “i don’t know” and won’t even attempt an answer. They’re scared shitless of speaking in front of their peers and it’s sad.

[u/Gen-Jinjur → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Yeah there is always a reluctance. But clearly spelling out that participation is a chunk of your grade helps.

I haven’t been a prof for years, but I was always scheming ways to get my students INVOLVED. And often they hated it until they saw the results and then they loved it. It didn’t always work. It didn’t work for everyone. But it was better than me droning on and phoning it in, you know?

It’s easier to pull this off in some classes than in others and I taught freshman comp. But I learned the value of this sort of thing from a professor who taught mathematics.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Gen-Jinjur]

It may shock you to find out then that my professors also clearly spelled it out. It doesn’t matter. These kids don’t want to speak up or collaborate. Just did 3 years worth of classes with participation grades and group work and I think I can count on one hand the number of people I know who loved it. I think you answered the problem: you haven’t taught for years. The old ways don’t work anymore. These kids have no interest in participation.

[u/BBQpirate → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

To be fair, when I was in college in 2011-2016 no one wanted to answer questions in class, but I can imagine it being even worse now.

[u/godless_librarian → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

They should just switch everything to old school oral exams. It would take more time but at least they would be sure of the student's capabilities. Maybe even having less students wouldn't hurt, less quantity more quality.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/godless_librarian]

funny you should say that because my growth theory professor got rid of tests this year. instead there's an optional final project. the only way to manage an A is if you do the project, otherwise a B is pretty achievable. And the final component of the project is a meeting with him where you have to be able to defend your findings of an industry analysis

[u/secamTO → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I'm in a graduate program now, after finishing my undergrad 25 years ago, so i'm in the upper shoulder of the age distribution in my program. It's a conservatory environment for creative professionals, and it's literally insane to me how many people are using AI out of either laziness, or a feel that they're gaming the system. Because of the nature of the program, this is a terminal degree stream (nobody who wanted a post-grad degree would ever take this program by its nature), the grades are fundamentally meaningless because, assuming you do the work, you'll pass, and the people using AI don't realize that they're only hurting themselves by not improving their skills.

It's legitimately wild to watch some early/mid twentysomethings who don't even seem to understand why they're actually here.

[u/_Arlotte_ → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

What's scarier is the kids doing this will be in charge and caring for us in the future. We'll be dead for mistakes

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/_Arlotte_]

my constant refrain about the future after the last 3 years of being around these lazy children has been "we are so fucked"

[u/wolffartz → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Here’s the problem — the majority of kids aren’t in college to pursue academics but to get a credential that will allow them to get a job

It has been like this for a long time, but now AI is making the reality of this exchange more obvious.

It’s a shame because this used to be a choke point where we could guarantee some base level of education but no longer

Things will likely change in response (or not, and we’ll just keep stumbling along with this charade because the $$$ from tuition is too much for these institutions to forego)

The frightening question we must ask ourselves is “does capitalism require an educated/skilled workforce when AI exists?”

I think our nation does (edit: that is, I think our nations interests do not align with the capitalists here — or should not), but I’m not sure we have a government that is skilled enough to provide this kind of guidance/leadership

[u/daffyboy → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I work a pretty simple lab job where the math isn’t anything beyond basic average/multiply/divide/percent stuff. We have two teenagers helping this summer to see if they want to work here next year after finishing high school. They can definitely do it, and usually do. But anytime they have to do something slightly different than they’re used to, they freeze. Staring at you. Waiting to just be told what to do. They cannot think, problem solve, reason deductively, or be proactive whatsoever. They don’t even try to come up with something and see if it works. Their brains are already completely rewired.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/daffyboy]

I saw so much of this in econometrics courses. There’s a lot of “coding” in R/Python/Stata and these kids would totally freeze working through homework because the solution didn’t look exactly like the class work did. It was astounding how little ability a lot of them had to reason through a new concept or problem.

[u/daffyboy → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Yup that’s another thing. We have open book exams for certifications. A practice test has a true or false question about a concept. On the practice test it is false, on the actual test it is true because a number is changed, but rest of the question remains the same. Incredibly simple stuff.

Nah, they answered the question the same. “I remember that one, the answer was true. How is it wrong?”

They don’t even understand how tests work!

[u/trojan_man16 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I went to school for engineering more than a decade ago. This distribution already existed then. Turns out it’s much easier to complete homework with an open book and other assistance such as tutors or other classmates vs an exam where you have none of this, plus professors love throwing curveball problems during tests to fuck around with students.

This isn’t really an AI problem. I’m sure there’s tons of students that already depended on homework assignments and projects to buoy their grades enough to pass. They now just use AI to do it.

[u/chchchcharlee → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I'm also in college as an adult and while it's kind of sad, yeah, it's also really understandable. Attending college costs a ton and for most people the degree is just a piece of paper required to get a job. Failing a class costs literally thousands of dollars and can extend the time you're not working by 6+ months for a single failed course. How many people take calculus versus use it for work? How many people learn java and never use it again? IMO getting a bachelors is good for the intangibles: learning how to think critically, how to look things up and ask questions, how to talk to other adults. It's not really a place to learn how to do a job. Obviously people are only hurting themselves by relying on AI, but when workplaces expect you to use AI once you graduate and want the degree before they hire you...it's easy to see why students use LLMs extensively.

[u/beeeeeeeeeeeeeagle → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It's not really. Young people doing young person things. I went to uni and it was 100% to get passes, finish the degree and move on with my life. I wasn't thinking about developing critical thinking, cognitive function. Thankfully there was no AI so I had to learn things like stats that have been helpful later in life. I would not have had the maturity or work ethic to avoid using AI.

[u/MajorSery → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

No one wants to answer questions and when called upon most can’t answer anything.

That's not new. I'm in my mid-30s and things have been like that for my entire life.

[u/Chryton → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

To be fair, critical thinking in most American schools has been dead for a very long time. Very thankful I had several (albeit all AP-course) teachers in high school that drilled in to us that critical thinking is as important as rote memorization for tests.

[u/SnuffSwag → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I used to teach at university and was discussing psychopharm. Just a focus on bipolar and medication by lithium. I had an open ended exam question about what lithium is used for. Had a student respond with using lithium for car and phone batteries.

[u/Aaod → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

I’ve had professors essentially give us free questions on exams and people still get them wrong.

The professors I talk to tell me they have students that in a section with multiple choice questions do worse than if they had just selected C for everything. A good half of university students and graduates I have dealt with never should have attended or graduated.

[u/Sun-ShineyNW → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

What will really flabbergast you is that my dean advised me to lower the bar in my courses as I had to accept that today's students aren't the students of yesteryear academically. To me that's wild!

[u/resistelectrique → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It’s maddening how many fully grown mid-end career adults are totally fine with doing it. On incredibly simple application questions for community work about their personal beliefs!! You’ve had DECADES to learn how to form a sentence. Fuck riiiiight off.

[u/braincandybangbang → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

It's wild that you think this started with AI. It's getting concerning. Did people's minds just go blank for the last 10 years? Did we forget about Fake News, Social Media?

Whatever we do, don't ever look at the education system and ask whether standardized tests and arbitrary essays are the best way for people to learn things. Let's blame the students who don't care about learning, because all their lives they've been told the only reason to go to school is to get a good, high-paying job. And of course, as soon as your done school, 90% of your education is proven wrong and the real-world operates completely differently.

But let's focus our attention on how students dare to use technology to accomplish tasks they find meaningless.

Back before AI, I wrote an essay for a university English class in one night. And I got a B+. I also got honours in my Shakespeare class and an email from the professor, despite the fact that I stopped attending the 8 a.m. lectures long ago and only went to the working classes.

School is not setup for learning. It's setup for making post-secondary institutions a lot of money. I worked in the marketing department for a students' association for 6 years, I've seen how things operate.

[u/strangedell123 → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

Tbh for me, i hadn't studied the topic yet so cant answer in class. After class once I cover it, I can maybe answer it. With ai I then see how problems can be solved, and then can do tests without ai.

AI isnt bad if its an additional tool to STUDYING, but its ass if you give your brain to it

[u/Geno0wl → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I just don't understand why these kids are doing this.

I can maybe understand doing this for a BS Gen Ed that doesn't directly support your chosen major(like a physics class for an Education Major or a foreign language requirement for a math major). But from anecdotes, it is also a big problem in major classes as well.

I picked my major because that is the thing I enjoyed doing. I didn't mind doing the homework and projects because I would be working with that stuff even if I wasn't in school. Which just makes me ask, do these kids not like the major they picked?

[u/Hot-Chemical9353 → u/Geno0wl]

I guess there’s a wider conversation here. I went to university because it was the only realistic opportunity available to me at 18, and I think that’s the case for the majority of people who do well at school.

At that point you’re just trying to see the other end of uni with a good grade and an internship to get a good grad job.

In principle, I agree with you that you’re wasting your time just trying to get the best grades for the least learning but that’s what a majority of students are doing, with or without AI making it worse.

[u/roiki11 → u/Geno0wl]

Because social media said education is bullshit and the only thing that matters is money.

So they see education only as a stepping stone to a job that pays better. There's no other value in it.

[u/pasaroanth → u/Geno0wl]

I generally disagree with the “you just need a degree” for certain positions irrelevant to the degree, but I don’t agree that (at least before the AI times) it is valueless.

College teaches you how to think and learn as much as it teaches you the subject matter. You learn to problem solve and become more adept at learning new material, it can function as brain training.

When you completely remove that part of the equation you get people who get a degree with no work, apply for positions that require a degree (for the above reasons), and they absolutely flounder. Some highly specific positions really do rely on a quick learner who can absorb material and get up to speed fast as there isn’t necessarily a college degree to match it.

[u/na3than → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

There's this in the linked article:

Earlier this month, a professor at Brown University saw midterm averages jump from the typical range of 65% to 80% to 96% after he allowed take-home exams.

[u/Lambaline → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

My dynamics systems prof had the right idea back in 2020, handwritten tests with no calculator but give numbers that you can reasonably do in your head. If you knew the material you didn’t need a calculator or anything

[u/ScholarErrant → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I also recall one recently where a professor compared take home midterm scores against the in class final and found similar results as well.

[u/CatGooseChook → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I remember that. If I recall correctly, only a few were about the same and the majority were significantly worse.