[Biologist123]

A college-friend from the Unviersity of Oxford, where students write one or two essays a week, got the top first (best mark) in his history degree. Initially impressed, one day I asked him his exam method - where each student must produce 3 essays in 3 hours (or did then) across about 5 or 6 papers. My friend’s approach was to thoroughly research 12 essay questions and pre-write 16 page essays for each paper, which he would then learn verbatim and trot out word-for-word the best fit to each exam question.

This compared to my method of reading widely, learning quotes and ideas and then writing each essay fresh in the exam hall - and I would typically manage about 3-4 pages per essay. (Reader, I did not get a top first).

I relate this anecdote as I don’t really see my friend’s method as being much better than using AI. Although I do acknowledge his 16 page essays must have been reasonably good.

[pcrh]

Your friend's approach doesn't sound like cheating, after all the wrote the original essays.

It's more similar to spending hours preparing small exam cheat sheets, and then realizing that you didn't need them during the exam, as you had learnt the material.

[Biologist123]

It definitely wasn’t cheating. But I felt it was not in the spirit of the exam system which I believed - maybe wrongly - was designed to test one’s ability to write a fresh essay from scratch under timed conditions.

What would you say about someone getting AI to write high standard essays and simply spend learn those word-for-word?

It’s also not cheating but not in the spirit of the thing I think.

[eviks]

> friend’s method as being much better than using AI

Why not? He wrote all the essays himself, after all, and in a setting that's much more relevant to real life vs. the artificial constraints of a shorter exam. With AI he would've written/learned nothing himself.

[Biologist123]

It’s a fair point, but as a thought experiment, how would you feel about AI writing the essays and simply regurgitating those? Legal but not in the spirit of things I think.

[scarecrowbob]

Yes, a different situation would have a different response.

The point is that your friend did all this effort to write those essays, which (supposedly, and I believe it) actually caused them to "learn" the material.

We are often changed in the process of doing thing, weather working out or thinking through concepts.

Your claim here is about like claiming you get the same workout regardless of if you drive a mile or ran a mile because you have changed positions using either method.

[eviks]

This is very different since the task was to do the creative work of writing an essay, which in this case wasn't done, so it's almost identical to the original cheating method with a little exception that you have to use human memory as a temporary buffer.

Don't see how it's legal (by the way, neither is the original method, the exam is legally about doing a task in the same conditions of having a set time as place)