[HN Gopher] AI Detection Tools Falsely Accuse International Stud...
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AI Detection Tools Falsely Accuse International Students of
Cheating
Author : jyunwai
Score : 20 points
Date : 2023-08-14 21:24 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (themarkup.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (themarkup.org)
| wilg wrote:
| Another reason these AI detection tools are snake oil.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Classifying people using AI is always going to lead to
| discrimination as long as there are differences between
| genders/ethnicities/socio-economic backgrounds. This is not
| preventable and you cannot do anything about it.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| You can thumb the scale until you get the answer you want.
| godelski wrote:
| This will always happen and will happen much more as we move
| forward. People specifically tune their models to sound human.
| People specifically use detectors to turn models, adversarially.
|
| I keep proclaiming that we live in Goodhart's Hell, and this is
| yet another great example.
|
| First, you have to remember that metrics are never a complete
| measure, but they are guides. This doesn't matter if you're
| cutting lumber or training a ML model. Metrics are __always__
| proxies. For the vast majority of things you are intending to
| evaluate, you don't actually have a measurable function to
| express that. Every fucking measurement has error/noise, and this
| is why you measure twice and cut once. It is absolutely insane
| that in the age of advanced algorithms we've just tossed caution
| to the wind and we're instead doing a half assed measurement and
| then getting upset when our cuts are bad, blaming the ruler or
| blaming the saw.
|
| Second, you have to ask how closely your metric aligns with the
| thing you're actually trying to measure. Even cutting lumber you
| have to check that your measurement aligns. Accounting for angles
| and grain. We should be doing the same in algorithms, but with
| __much__ more care, but we don't for some reason.
|
| For some reason we seem to have this belief that empirical
| measurements are absolute and generalized. We seem to have this
| belief that noise is a thing that can be decoupled from the
| system and precisely removed. We seem to have this belief that
| measurements are unhackable. What the fuck is going on. This
| isn't just ML, it is academia, it is bureaucracy, it is the
| workplace, it is governments, it is economics. So I gotta ask,
| what the fuck is going on? In the past we treated things as hard,
| so there was an inherent uncertainty built into mental models but
| now we treat everything like they are simple to understand and a
| quick reading or video can make you an expert. We may have never
| had nuance from non-experts, but now everyone acts like an expert
| and that math is unbiased and objective. Why do we keep shooting
| ourselves in the foot and deciding the next best action is to
| reload the gun?
| rondrabkin wrote:
| I worked for a big testing company. There are all sorts of
| cheating and many are easy to detect with the right tools. Maybe
| this is just the wrong tool.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| There is (and always has been) a fairly effective way of
| detecting cheating. Have a conversation with a student. Ask them
| about some of their recent work. This can be in the form of
| something more formal like a viva, or it can be a casual chat.
|
| These conversations should not be graded, just flag for problems
| (of which cheating is just one).
|
| Combining this with verifying the student's ID is about as good
| as it gets. I think a mandatory 1-on-1 meeting with a member of
| staff at least once per term is essential, and serves many
| purposes.
|
| EDIT: I think oftentimes it's known which students are cheating,
| but it's not easy to do anything about it.
| usea wrote:
| I've had teachers try this method with me and determined I was
| cheating when I was not. I don't believe in it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This happened to me in secondary school, and I'm _still_ mad
| about it.
| justrealist wrote:
| When the student is ESL in the first place (and doing
| coursework via text), it's pretty hard to determine whether
| they are cheating or just struggling to communicate verbally.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Personal attention costs money.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but university students (and especially international
| students) are paying a lot of money.
|
| We're all (understandably) upset if we pay for something much
| more modest and when it has an issue we're unable to talk to
| a real human to try to resolve the issue. Imagine paying
| _many thousands per year_, working on projects and papers,
| being taught increasingly by adjuncts, struggling to register
| for all your required classes as administrators admit more
| students every year (without hiring more faculty), and then
| when you're accused by a bot of cheating, the response to a
| suggestion that you should talk with a staff person at least
| once per term is "oh that's too expensive".
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-08-14 23:01 UTC)