The robot apocalypse is upon us - an AI can now produce essays that cannot be picked up by plagiarism software. The Telegraph is breathlessly reporting that teachers are begging the government to solve the problem.
I've been playing around with the AI, and it is, indeed, impressive. It can produce perfectly reasonable essays in response to exam questions, in whatever style that you request; and not just essays, it can answer maths and science questions (and indeed any subject) with step by step explanations
Should teachers be worried? Probably. My DS reports that he has already heard of kids using it to do their homework.
How can we combat this?
Well, for English and humanities teachers, I would advise that you make an account and chat with the AI yourself. Feed it questions, see what it comes up with. It does come up with different answers each time you ask, but with strong similarities. If you feed your essay question in enough times, in enough ways, you should be able to spot AI generated answers.
The other solution is to only bother marking work that the students have produced in class, in test conditions - this is a policy I've had as a maths teacher for years. As a correct answer is a correct answer, who knows if it was produced by the pupil, their tutor, their parents, or the kid they hang out with at break time?
Parents: Try to encourage your kids not to cheat as in the end the AI can't sit their exams for them.
The software won't be free forever. But who knows what is coming next?
chat.openai.com/chat