Good on him for catching them out, but they should've received more severe a punishment for such blatant and lazy cheating.
And explaining how you caught them doesn't make them less likely to cheat in the future, it simply makes them less likely to be caught doing so.
It's been a good long while, but when I was a student, cheating got you automatically expelled - temporarily for a small "casual" case of plagiarism, permanently for anything more egregious.
I guess things have changed.
Yeah. When I was a student, I got sent to an academic misconduct panel just suspected of cheating, and was told I absolutely could be expelled if they found out I had actually done it.
And sure, in reality somebody had copied my work and I could prove it, so I was fine - but at least they bothered to actually investigate in my example!
I know policies are different between institutions, but these students got caught red-handed not just plagiarising, but outright faking coursework submissions. Why is there no investigation into their previous coursework, no misconduct panel interviews, literally nothing apart from failing the specific part of the mid-term they were caught cheating on.
No wonder they don't give a damn when the punishment for being caught has so little teeth!
As you say, times have changed for the worse.
Colleges have become profit obsessed and students are the cash cows. Expulsion is bad for revenue.
Policy where I teach is that it's up to the professor's discretion, though that's mostly because it's not always as easy to prove as this. There's a boilerplate anti cheating section we have in our syllabus that says it's a reportable offense that may lead to academic probation or expulsion.
Honestly, it's also a ton of paperwork so I've just opted to fail them since usually my papers aren't so easily answered via an LLM and rather than tell them I caught them cheating, I simply point out they missed rubric item 2, 5 and 6 so it's something solid, not my speculation. But I also haven't white texted them yet, lol.
32/35?! Cheesus Crackers. The microplastics were already making us stupid, now whatever's left is being melted by corpos.
I think it's supposed to mean 35 people failed, 32 of those because of AI.
That makes a lot more sense. Having almost all your students proven cheaters would be catastrophic, and I can't imagine he would have remained so relatively calm and matter-of-fact.
It's also important to remember that that's 32 college students who didn't proofread. How many more noticed his shenanigans when highlighting the text, or simply used LLMs for only part of their essay?
That professor was more charitable than I would have been, not failing all those students out of the entire class immediately.
Back when I was in university, if you got caught cheating, you got expelled immediately. Now, all you get is possibly a slightly lower score on your midterm?
This is bullshit
That's why university evaluations should be always in pen and paper.
this is just unacceptable, those students should be just expelled without mercy IMO.
Or at least give students computers that have restricted or no access to the internet? Even before LLMs having access to the internet would have been a huge opportunity to cheat. At least in most subjects.
Also, what happened to teachers/supervisors walking around and checking if the students cheat? Back when I went to school we also cheated with cheat sheets or exchanging answers but it was always risky because getting busted meant failing the test (or worse).
Letting students use the internet unrestrictedly would be like the teacher leaving the room and leaving us unsupervised for the duration of the test back in my days.
Are cheating and plagiarism no longer grounds for immediate expulsion...?
Universities don't teach students out of a sense of duty and honor.
Students are their funding. Failing these 32 students could cost the school millions.
The upper management of high schools are generally the kinda people who'd say "it's not cheating, it's just a tool"
The midterm, by the way, was about the Industrial Revolution.
I get it, you spent a fortune on this class so you could have a job that will allow you to maybe retire someday. You don't even give a shit about this class or the material, you don't care about history and you just needed the credit. It has literally nothing to do with any of the jobs you might get in the future, if you learn nothing it won't make a difference. If you study and try your best you still might not actually get a good grade. The temptation to cheat would be hard to resist.
All AI has done is reveal a deeper problem with college - students aren't there to learn, they're there to be credentialed.
Yes and no.
Yes, degrees are credentials and sadly many people just want those instead of having any inherent interest.
But no, because those credentials are not empty words, but are supposed to mean something. You might not need to know about the industrial revolution in your job (and looking at the way our world develops right now, I would say industrial revolution and its changes in society are very relevant right now), but the credential for it is supposed to show that you are able to learn about a topic, read relevant literature and then apply that knowledge in analysing things. THAT is the goal of going to college. And most jobs (edit: that really require a certain college degree) need exactly that kind of skill. Which students don't learn if they let a probability machine do the "thinking" for them.
Failure to learn about the industrial revolution is how we end up with tech workers who bitch about AI but still refuse to unionize.
In University I would hope most people in the class are there because they DO have an interest. On the other hand, if I could have cheated on organic chemistry like this, I probably would have.
On the other, other hand, we would copy eachothers work, but at least we'd change it enough so that it wouldn't be obvious. It's not that the new generation cheats more, it's that they're bad at it.
Also, we didn't write a lot of paragraphs of text in chemistry, so maybe my experience is skewed there too
32 out of 35.
That tracks. I hate over 90% of people
Wow this gen is pathetic. 0 tech literacy
Did a paper with a 20-year old. Intelligent, well-spoken girl. She was absolutely astonished that there are keyboard shortcuts for Cut and Paste.
Good on the three people who wasn't caught, either because the don't use AI or because they at least read the question and the llm output. And gold star if any of them noticed the white text but didn't tell the rest of the students!
Gibson shared some of the most examples in a follow-up video.
The most examply of examples, presumable?
If you're just rehashing someone else's video for your "article" can't you at least check your language?
At least you know it was written by a human 🙂 I honestly welcome dumb spelling and grammar mistakes nowadays - and I never thought I'd ever say that - as a sign that I'm probably not reading slop.
Good. Is there an office on student conduct at the place he worked? Has he reported the students as cheaters already?
You'd have to be really dumb to get caught by this.
People have been using the white font trick in job applications for years now.
Firstly they're students. They haven't done a job application yet - and quite frankly, a lot of them don't know obvious shit because, well, they're young.
But also, a lot of "professionals" who really should know better do stupid shit too.
This is very satisfying!
If they're doing this in other classes then they're either going to get caught and fail or they won't get caught but won't have learned anything. What are these people going to be doing out in the world when they get older?
Our professor did the same thing last year. There was this MIPS assembly tasks and he added extra info there lol
The lesson here is that US university diploma is worth as much as toilet paper. They have a profit motive to not expel cheating students. EU countries should stop accepting US diplomas as legally valid.
They do not even care to test students properly - how can they even use AI? Why not let the write the answers to a midterm on paper in a supervised hall? Or some kind of secure computing environment Seriously what is going on lol. They aren't being tested at all really.
I’d love to have heard the argument from the two students challenging their failing grade for that
Depends on the prompt they gave to build their defense...
Honestly, if you get caught doing this, you should be expelled and blacklisted from all colleges and universities by SSN, as well as put on an international registry.
that doesnt really fit the crime. in most universities you will get automatic zero on that assignment, and may get reported to the dean, thats about it. if the professor is making an example they can choose to make them fail the whole course automatically or force them to withdraw the class. this isnt expel worthy though. things that are expel worthy or severe violence, or academic dismissal(you fail too many classes on too many semesters), or you have a cheating ring.
That's awful steep. I dislike AI as much as the next guy, but as a former college prof I don't think I could see myself being that heavy handed.
Fail the paper, sure, but depending on past submissions I'd consider an alternative assignment. Otherwise, good luck when you take the program again.
It is the next level of laziness to not check what AI generates for you.
I mean, if the AI never explains to them what cheating is, can they even be blamed?
This all sounds like no one is holding the students accountable at all, which means they're not being educated, they're being babysat.
Professors should not be wasting time on gotcha traps for cheats. Mid terms should be hand written on paper.
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.