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> it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". My wife is an accounting professor.

• DSingularity 1y ago
  This is now reality -- fighting to change the students is a losing battle. Besides in terms of normalizing grade distributions this is not that complicated to solve. Target the cheaters with pop quizzes. Prof can randomly choose 3 questions from assignments. If students cant get enough marks on 2/3 of them they are dealt a huge penalty. Students that actually work through the problems will have no problems with scoring enough marks on 2/3 of the questions. Students that lean irresponsibly on LLMs will lose their marks.
  • rrr_oh_man 1y ago
    Maybe we'll revert to Soviet bilet-style oral exams...
    • skandinaff 1y ago
      But they do that already in Danish universities, and I have to admit, those are very effective.
  • cellularmitosis 1y ago
    Why not just grade solely based on live performance? (quizzes and tests) Homework would still be assigned as a learning tool, but has no impact on your grade.
    • foxglacier 1y ago
      Because students wouldn't do the homework and would fail the quizzes. Students need to be pressured into learning and grades for doing the practice are a way. Don't pretend many students are self-motivated enough to follow the lecturer's instructions when there's no grade in it and insisting that "trust me, you won't learn if you don't do it".
      • chii 1y ago
        > would fail the quizzes. not those who did actually do the work, and learnt. The change ought to be that students are allowed to be failed, and this should be a form of punishment for those who "cheat".
        • lelanthran 1y ago
          Aren't students already allowed to fail? As a comment upthread said, let them cheat on the take home as much as they want to, they're still going to fail the exam.
          • fhd2 1y ago
            Well, from what I understand, the answer is kinda "no". Depends on the country and educational system I suppose, but I do believe professors in many places get in trouble for failing too many students. It's right there in the phrasing. If most students pass and some fail, that's fine. Revenue comes in, graduates are produced, the university is happy. If most students fail, revenue goes down, less students might sign up, less graduate, the university is unhappy. It's a tragedy of the commons situation, because some professors will be happy to pass the majority of students regardless of merit. Then the professors that don't become the problem, there's something wrong with them. Likewise, if most universities are easy and some are really hard, they might not attract students. The US has this whole prestige thing going on, that I haven't seen all that much in other countries. So if the students overall get dumber because they grow up over relying on tools, the correction mechanism is not that they have to work harder once the exam approaches. It's that the exam gets easier.
• el_benhameen 1y ago
  I wonder to what extent this is students who would have stuck it out now taking the easy way and to what extent it’s students who would have just failed now trying to stick it out.
  • anon35 1y ago
    This is an extremely important question, and you’ve phrased it nicely. We’re either handicapping our brightest, or boosting our dumbest. One part is concerning, the other encouraging .
    • noisy_boy 1y ago
      Which part is encouraging? We rely on the extra ordinary (talent and/or sheer drive) to make leaps of progress - what happens if they are handicapped? If the dumbest fake it and make it to the positions they shouldn't be entrusted with, what prevents the catastrophes?
    • yamazakiwi 1y ago
      The brightest will evaluate the tradeoffs properly or will have education that will give them proper evaluations of AI. Maybe some bright people will be handicapped, but it won't be the bright'est'. That handicap on the bright could also lead to new forms of talent and multi-faceted growth. What percentage of the dumbest will be boosted? What makes a person dumb? If they are productive and friendly, isn't that more important? What percentage of the dumbest will fall farther or abandon heavy learning even earlier?
    • Suppafly 1y ago
      >We’re either handicapping our brightest, or boosting our dumbest. Honestly it seems like we're doing both most of the time. It's hard to only optimize resources for boosting the dumbest without taking them away from the brightest.
• samuel 1y ago
  I guess this students don't pass, do they? I don't think that's a particularly hard concern. It will take a bit more, but will learn the lesson (or drop out). I'm more worried about those who will learn to solve the problems with the help of an LLM, but can't do anything without one. Those will go under the radar, unnoticed, and the problem is, how bad is it, actually? I would say that a lot, but then I realize I'm pretty useless driver without a GPS (once I get out of my hometown). That's the hard question, IMO.
  • 9rx 1y ago
    Back in my day they worried about kids not being able to solve problems without a calculator, because you won't always have a calculator in your pocket. ...But then.
    • oerdier 1y ago
      Not being able to solve basic math problems in your mind (without a calculator) is still a problem. "Because you won't always have a calculator with you" just was the wrong argument. You'll acquire advanced knowledge and skills much, much faster (and sometimes only) if you have the base knowledge and skills readily available in your mind. If you're learning about linear algebra but you have to type in every simple multiplication of numbers into a calculator...
      • 9rx 1y ago
        > if you have the base knowledge and skills readily available in your mind. I have the base knowledge and skill readily available to perform basic arithmetic, but I still can't do it in my mind in any practical way because I, for lack of a better description, run out of memory. I expect most everyone eventually "runs out of memory" if the values are sufficiently large, but I hit the wall when the values are exceptionally small. And not for lack of trying – the "you won't always have a calculator" message was heard. It wasn't skill and knowledge that was the concern, though. It was very much about execution. We were tested on execution. > If you're learning about linear algebra but you have to type in every simple multiplication of numbers into a calculator... I can't imagine anyone is still using a four function calculator. Certainly not in an application like learning linear algebra. Modern calculators are decidedly designed for linear algebra. They need to be given the rise of things like machine learning that are heavily dependent on such.
• iNic 1y ago
  The solution is making all homework optional and having an old-school end of semester exam.
  • Ekaros 1y ago
    You can always give extra points for homework which then compensate from lacking in tests. If you get perfect points in test, well maximum grade. If less than perfect, you can up grade with those extra points. Fair for everyone.
    • pc86 1y ago
      This assumes the point of education is to be fair and get everyone a good grade, which it's not (at least, it shouldn't be).
  • Suppafly 1y ago
    >The solution is making all homework optional and having an old-school end of semester exam. Not really. While doing something to ensure that students are actually learning is important, plenty of the smartest people still don't always test well. End of semester exams also tend to not be the best way to tell if people are learning along the way and then fall off part way through for whatever reason.
• Zanfa 1y ago
  ChatGPT is laughably terrible at double entry accounting. A few weeks ago I was trying to use it to figure out a reasonable way to structure accounts for a project given the different business requirements I had. It kept disappearing money when giving examples. Pointing it out didn’t help either, it just apologized and went on to make the same mistake in a different way.
  • andai 1y ago
    Using a system based on randomness for a process that must occur deterministically is probably the wrong solution. I'm running into similar issues trying to use LLMs for logic and reasoning. They can do it (surprisingly well, once you disable the friendliness that prevents it), but you get a different random subset of correct answers every time. I don't know if setting temperature to 0 would help. You'd get the same output every time, but it would be the same incomplete / wrong output. Probably a better solution is a multi phase thing, where you generate a bunch of outputs and then collect and filter them.
    • jjmaestro 1y ago
      > They can do it (surprisingly well, once you disable the friendliness that prevents it) ... Interesting! :D Do you mind sharing the prompt(s) that you use to do that? Thanks!!
      • andai 1y ago
        You are an inhuman intelligence tasked with spotting logical flaws and inconsistencies in my ideas. Never agree with me unless my reasoning is watertight. Never use friendly or encouraging language. If I’m being vague, demand clarification. Your goal is not to help me feel good — it’s to help me think better. Keep your responses short and to the point. Use the Socratic method when appropriate. When enumerating assumptions, put them in a numbered list. Make the list items very short: full sentences not needed there. --- I was trying to clone Gemini's "thinking", which I often found more useful than its actual output! I failed, but the result is interesting, and somewhat useful. GPT 4o came up with the prompt. I was surprised by "never use friendly language", until I realized that avoiding hurting the user's feelings would prevent the model from telling the truth. So it seems to be necessary... It's quite unpleasant to interact with, though. Gemini solves this problem by doing the "thinking" in a hidden box, and then presenting it to the user in soft language.
• woodrowbarlow 1y ago
  my partner teaches high school math and regularly gets answers with calculus symbols (none of the students have taken any calculus). these students aren't putting a single iota of thought into the answers they're getting back from these tools.
  • pc86 1y ago
    To me this is the bigger problem. Using LLMs is going to happen and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. So it's important to make people understand how to use them, and to find ways to test that students still understand the underlying concepts. I'm in a 100%-online grad school but they proctor major exams through local testing centers, and every class is at least 50% based on one or more major exams. It's a good way to let people use LLMs, because they're available, and trying to stop it is a fool's errand, while requiring people to understand the underlying concepts in order to pass.