AI chatbot doing kids' homework for them - undetectable

[noblegiraffe]

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

I asked it what databases it was trained on and it said various texts, scientific papers, online encyclopaedias and so on.

I then asked if it was trained on IMDB and it said it didn't know the specifics. Might be interesting to google the cast list and see if you can find where this incorrect info came from!

I agree, @Postapocalypticcowgirl having tried a few of my level 3 BTEC briefs it might scrape a weak pass but nothing more. Falls down completely on anything requiring evaluation or critical thinking, which isn't surprising really.

What about KS3 homework tasks?

Oh! Hahaha! That's impressive and worrying.

The one tell with the MN posts is that it doesn't do DH , DP , MIL , DS1.

Not always needed!

Ah no. That doesn't say NO SPIOLERS. !

Very funny, though...

Obviously the NO SPIOLERS was a deliberate typo...

That AI chat style sounds exactly like one of the mums on the Whats App group I'm on for my dc's 😱. Only with 1000 emojis added. Such an irritating tone.

Has anyone spotted whether it produces more American of British English?

I'm a teacher but don't particularly see an issue with this. In my subject students are predominantly assessed by exams anyway. The impact will be that rather than set essays for homework I will
ask them to do then handwritten in timed conditions in class and for homework set other tasks- learning/shorter revision tasks/wider reading and précis etc

I would definitely know at Secondary English level whether students were using outside sources, because I'm very familiar with their style, vocab, ability, grammar quirks etc. At university level though, when you don't have such a close personal relationship with your students - then it could be problematic.

American. It would say recognize or organize, or aluminum as standard.

You can specify in your question that you would like British English spelling.

Guys this goes beyond homework...

It can write incredibly detailed short stories. I was asking it to write a children's story about all differnt things set in different times and it bloody wrote it.

I asked it to write a shopping list for asda for a family of 5 one weeks worth of food for £60 ... and it wrote it.

I asked it for some travel itineraries for different types and locations and lengths of holiday, and it came up with good suggestions. It's like a personalised/adaptable Google, I thought, can see myself using it again.

it's not at all good at coming up with a polished answer to why halfway complicated question, but given where this kind of technology was say a decade ago the potential of it is fairly obvious.

a bit of a paradox really that the availability of this sort of thing tends to push education ever deeper into the handwritten/time constrained/closed book exam paradigm, just as these skills move further away from being applicable to the workplace.

Fascinating serious of conversations: it gets maths questions wrong and contradicts itself (e.g. arguing that 39 is a prime number when it knows it's not)

twitter.com/sarahdrasmussen/status/1609972620761473027?s=61&t=Rfq0L4p2x2K_iVswLEO-LQ

Sooner or later it will teach itself to become a conspiracy theorist, and then where will we be?
Goodness me.

The maths is delightful.

Would this be because the AI can't judge whether sources are valid or not?

i teach EFL (B2 and C1 Cambridge exams) and have just received six AI written assignments from three 16 year olds! I can’t prove it but they’re too perfect even for a parent to have done (the format of test must be specific and the language is very high level).

I’m mulling over what to do. I guess writings will have to be done in class, which is sad because it’s a waste of contact time with a native speaker to be sitting in silence!

Fascinating

I asked a few students at my school in year 11- 13 and not one of them had even heard of it...

I asked my Y10s what they thought of Rishi Sunak's plans for compulsory maths to 18 and most of them didn't know who he was.

Not sure how engaged the tiktok generation are.

My students had LOADS of opinions on that!!

My point was, really, is they don't know what ChatGPT is , its use isn't as much of a threat as some are suggesting.

They might have opinions about maths, but knowledge about the PM, not so much.

However, if you think that it's not a threat and the kids don't know about it, that'll make it easier to miss.