Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by asah 1232 days ago
seems like this is the future... 1. first day of class, write a N word essay and sign a release permitting this to be used to detect cheating. The essay topic is chosen at random.

2. digitize & feed to learning model, which detects that YOU are cheating.

upside: this also helps detect students who are getting help (e.g. parents)

downside: arms race as students feed their cheat-essays (memorize their essays?) into AI-detection models that are similarly trained.

6 comments

The funniest implication here is that the student's writing skill isn't expected to improve.
I was just asking my partner who’s a writer if it would even be fair to train a model based on a student at Nth grade if the whole point is to measure growth. Would there be enough “stylistic tokens” developed in a young person’s writing style?
Personally, I feel mildly embarrassed when reading my essays from years prior. And I probably still count as a 'young person'.

That said, there's no need to consider changes in years when stylistic choices can change from one day to another depending on one's mood, recent thoughts, relationship with the teacher, etc.

That's why I've always been a little confused about how some (philologists?) treat certain ancient texts as not being written by some authors due to the text's style, as if ancient people could not significantly deviate from their usual style.

> first day of class, write a N word essay

Initially I thought you meant having the student write an essay about slurs, as the AI will refuse to output anything like that. Then I realized you meant "N" as in "Number of words".

Still, that first idea might actually work; make the students write about hotwiring cars or something that's controversial enough for the AI to ban it but not controversial enough that anybody will actually care.

> upside: this also helps detect students who are getting help (e.g. parents)

Downside: it also likely detects, without differentiation, students whose writing style undergoes a major jump because of learning, which is, you know, the actual thing you are trying to promote.

> first day of class, write a N word essay and sign a release permitting this to be used to detect cheating

Why once? Most students need writing skills more than half the high-school curriculum.

There are also some countries that don't fetishize cheating this much so perhaps they will just continue not caring.
Arms race are not really an issue, you've managed to make your student work, one way or another.