[ufo]

In my work as a professor, AI has demonstrated a noticeable disruptive impact for the worse.

It has become difficult to grade students using anything other than in-person pen and paper assessments, because AI cheating is rampant and hard to detect. It is particularly bad for introductory-level courses; the simpler the material the hardest it is to make it AI-proof.

[soperj]

It should make the university's current system untenable, which will be great for anyone who actually wants to learn at University. Cheating was rampant prior to this, hopefully they actually do something about it now.

[JohnMakin]

> It has become difficult to grade students using anything other than in-person pen and paper assessments,

This shouldn't be a big deal. This was the norm for decades. My CS undergrad I only finished ~10 years ago, and every test was proctored and pen and paper. Very, very rarely would there be a remote submission. It did not seem possible to easily cheat in that environment unless the test allowed notes you yourself did not write, or if you procured a copy of the test beforehand and were able to study off that previously, but the material was sufficiently rigorous that you sort of had to know it well to pass the class, which seems to me the whole aim of a college course.

[KPGv2]

> This shouldn't be a big deal. This was the norm for decades.

We need to hire more professors, then, as the ratio of FTE profs to FTE students is significantly lower, even over just a decade.

Edit: But I agree. I've mentioned to my professor wife that there needs to be movement back to oral exams. Orals exams are graded, nothing else is. IT works for law school. One of the only things that works for law school. One exam at the end of the semester. Nothing else matters, because the only thing a class needs to measure is mastery of the material, not whether you are diligent at completing basic work with the help of textbooks and friends and the Internet.

[ufo]

I was referring to other kinds of assessment such as exercise lists, take-home coding projects, technical writing, etc.

[sodapopcan]

Conversely, if it drives us back to pen and paper for many things, I see that as a win.

[ufo]

An indirect effect though is that if we no longer dedicate a portion of the grade to homework, fewer students do the homework and then they crash in the written exam. (Students have always been very grade-motivated. If it's not worth points they'll deprioritize it.)

[thot_experiment]

I think a big reason for the shitshow we're seeing in America is the continued systematic destruction of our education system and it definitely seems like AI is adding a considerable amount of fuel to the fire destroying our ability to think critically.

[dapperdrake]

As someone who has also been there (close enough):

What is your guess as to how this will be different from pocket calculators?

[Quothling]

I'm not GP but I've been an external examiner for Danish CS students for longer than a decade. When I look at my previous gradings have matched the expected distribution nationally. There was a diviation during covid, but not compared to the national distribution which was lower all over the board. For the past year things have been very different. The trend is now that you see the same amount of good students, but you see almost no middle students. You have students who hand in great projects and a well written thesis. Who can't tell you very simple things about the work they've turned in. There is no real way to prove that these students cheat, but the study programme regulations are pretty clear when students can't answer questions about what they've written.

When I look at this january's results it's all near top mark or near bottom or failed. Almost nothing in between, and my grades match what has been reported by other examiners so far.

[dapperdrake]

Separate political pressures have already forced some departments to turn a blind eye to stuff like this. Even before LLMs.

[bcrosby95]

It already is different in the way teachers tend to care about. Kids learn the math that pocket calculators help you with before they have the capability and self-determination to find and use a pocket calculator. Pocket calculators aren't short circuiting any 7 year old's ability to learn basic addition.

[citizenpaul]

I almost think at this point anyone attempting to make this absurd connection is a paid shill.

No AI it is not like calculators, looms, engines, or any other advancement.

If AI continues to improve we will need a complete reset of how human society works. That will not happen without mountains of bodies. There are 2 main ways civilization re-balances when work/worker ratio becomes untenable. War or famine. Hope you and you loved ones are on the lucky side.

[dapperdrake]

The idea was to get insights into the difference that I may not have thought about.

[citizenpaul]

Cunningham's Law?

Ok. Aside from the obvious things like , calculators can't be co-opted for undermining and exploiting their users? Calculators can't be primed with false information for manipulating its users? Calculators just offload some longform math, and lets be real a huge percent of people barely touched a calculator after school. AI is basically glued to 70% of the populations hand.

Even at its current level AI is diminishing the value of being someone knowledgeable.

At the core computers are a power consolidation machine. AI streamlines boring/slow aspects of consolidating that power to those that control the AI.

[ufo]

The most frustrating part is that giving feedback on their essays or source code is a lot of work, which goes to waste if the student cheated.

Unlike calculators, making an assessment slop-proof often demands more resources to grade it, be it because the assignment needs to be more complicated, or because it needs more teaching assistants, or more time allotted for oral presentations. I also shudder at the suggestions to just come up with assignments that assume the students will use AI assistance anyway. That's how you end up with Programming 102 students that can't code their way around a for loop.

[sodapopcan]

You can't be serious...

[dapperdrake]

Am serious about asking for the opinion of someone affected by a problem or phenomenon.

[sodapopcan]

Ya, sorry, I'm in a mood.

But logically, calculators only do math, and they have primitive inputs that aren't going to match exactly what is on the sheet for anything other than THE most simplest of equations. You can't talk to a calculator in natural language, you have to learn how to use one (kind of like a ahem programming language). I never found calculators helped me "cheat" at math, it was still hard.

[Yoric]

FWIW, when I was studying, I trained on some decades old physics exams. Some of them were largely about calculating things by hand.

So, yeah, calculators did lead academia to change how exams had to be designed, because it solved some questions automatically.

I still think that LLMs are much worse, but I feel that the question is actually valid.

[dapperdrake]

Most of the contemporary mathematical proofs from LLMs read like first-semester failings. Doesn’t really help to cheat there, either.

[sodapopcan]

Interesting! Though I will hold out for the "you're prompting it wrong" comments.

[jklein11]

You are a professor and unclear on the difference between harder and hardest?

[thot_experiment]

There are professors in non english speaking countries it turns out.

[aguacaterojo]

good chance he is a professor in a technical field and English is not his first language

[sodapopcan]

Absolute possible. They also could have just made a typo while typing a comment on a casual internet forum, which is also perfectly acceptable.