[HN Gopher] Teachers are using AI to grade essays. Some experts ...
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       Teachers are using AI to grade essays. Some experts are raising
       ethical concerns
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2024-04-06 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
        
       | feross wrote:
       | Students are using AI to write their essays. Teachers are using
       | AI to grade their essays.
       | 
       | Engineers are using AI to write code. Other engineers are using
       | AI to review that code.
       | 
       | Same thing will happen in many other areas of life.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | Email is needlessly padded out by an AI writing assistant.
         | Recipient uses AI to generate the tl;dr version.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | The 8th OSI layer.
        
         | dottjt wrote:
         | The absolute worst case where I see this is in generating
         | acceptance criteria for tickets. It drives me insane, because
         | so many of the acceptance criteria needlessly overlap so it's
         | even harder to figure out what's going on.
        
         | akira2501 wrote:
         | Students and teachers using AI to do their work for them is
         | unethical.
         | 
         | I'm not convinced engineers are broadly using AI to write
         | anything important, or that AI code reviews are a significant
         | part of any companies bottom line.
         | 
         | This is a CNN article written by someone lacking the
         | sophistication to actually handle the subject.
        
           | gpderetta wrote:
           | Maybe the article was written by an AI.
           | 
           | Maybe this comment too!
        
             | AlienRobot wrote:
             | In hindsight perhaps this wasn't the best username to
             | pick...
        
           | ramon156 wrote:
           | I'm glad Harmonic lets you filter some articles. the
           | guardian, cnn and bcc articles have become a tumor on my
           | timeline.
        
         | RobotToaster wrote:
         | To quote Zizek:
         | 
         | "that AI will be the death of learning & so on; to this, I say
         | NO! My student brings me their essay, which has been written by
         | AI, & I plug it into my grading AI, & we are free! While the
         | 'learning' happens, our superego satisfied, we are free now to
         | learn whatever we want"
        
           | Joker_vD wrote:
           | ...why even bother with essays at all then. This is some kind
           | of insane "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" setup
           | that benefits nobody.
        
             | zamfi wrote:
             | > benefits nobody
             | 
             | That would be the point. Why bother at all?
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | Because brain development happens under external stress,
               | and absent that people stay dumb.
        
             | acchow wrote:
             | Students shouldn't be turning in essays. They should turn
             | in the chat history with an LLM. We need to go beyond just
             | putting your own thoughts into words but instead guiding
             | students on how to explore and hone their own thoughts with
             | AI.
             | 
             | If they come up with metprocesses to game this, that's a
             | win.
        
           | cjk2 wrote:
           | To quote me: _" That's what happens when you go listen to
           | philosophers. You get ideas. Wrong ones."_
           | 
           | I spent a lot of time with academic philosophers and have
           | found precisely fuck all insight.
        
             | theturtletalks wrote:
             | The best philosophic ideas I've read come from programmers
             | and builders. I don't know why that connection exists. My
             | hunch is that programming and philosophy both deal in the
             | abstract so are inherently connected somehow.
        
         | cjk2 wrote:
         | Some of us take pride in the fact we aren't.
         | 
         | I suspect we'll be all that is left in the information decay we
         | face.
        
         | mateo1 wrote:
         | Learning is unique as the whole point is to do the thinking
         | yourself.
        
         | saurik wrote:
         | Advertisers are using AI to write ad copy. Consumers are using
         | AI to read and ignore ads.
         | 
         | So, developers and users get into an AI war over CAPTCHAs.
         | ...and, well, welcome to the latent dystopia :(.
        
       | checker659 wrote:
       | Checkmate suckers (er, I mean students)!
        
       | dottjt wrote:
       | My first impression is that teachers would primarily be doing
       | this if schools are understaffed and teachers are overworked.
       | 
       | But I'm sure there's a million other factors as well i.e. you're
       | saving time regardless.
        
       | internetter wrote:
       | I can't imagine AI is very good at grading, as in ingesting the
       | entire internet, it has converged on the median, most average
       | writing.
        
         | kleene_op wrote:
         | Since students themself use AI to write essays, those grading
         | AI will be evaluating the most average writing anyway. We've
         | now come full circle, just losing our ability to write in the
         | process.
        
           | sandspar wrote:
           | The hero's journey: end up back where you started, having
           | gained something in the process.
           | 
           | AI's journey: end up back where you started, having lost
           | something in the process.
        
             | HPsquared wrote:
             | The AI gains more training data. It's not exactly the
             | Odyssey, but still.
        
       | washadjeffmad wrote:
       | Teachers are using AI to generate multiple choices tests from
       | reading assignments and assigning to students via all-in-one
       | portals.
       | 
       | There are a host of services that leverage open multi-modal open
       | models tailored to everything right now, from generating syllabi
       | and course shells to handling your ARD. It's removing the
       | administrative overhead that computerization promised in the 70s
       | and 80s that largely stalled out because IT management had to
       | manufacture some dependence to keep their jobs.
        
         | tptacek wrote:
         | I kind of like this as a productive use of LLMs. A rare case
         | where I can imagine the model would be more effective than a
         | skilled human.
        
       | ametrau wrote:
       | This is really bad. I can see many teachers defending the result
       | the AI gives a student out of stubbornness and fear of being
       | discovered using it. And that's a disaster.
        
         | t-3 wrote:
         | From what I've read, many teachers using AI for grading are
         | being supplied commercial AI tools by the schools themselves.
         | They're _expected_ to be using it. Given the trend towards
         | lower budgets and larger classes, I can 't imagine pushback
         | against AI tools being taken very seriously by administrators.
        
       | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
       | I was naive when this AI era was first getting started. My
       | instinct was to worry about students doing the cheating, not
       | getting cheated.
        
         | avery17 wrote:
         | Students have always been getting cheated.
        
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