It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our tech columnist
In my academic field of sustainability, AI still fails to explain what economic sustainability means. It’s very simple.
I lecture and explain to my students that economic sustainability is about how we assess and manage our knowledge, innovations, wealth, and other man-made capital. I stress that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT profit and revenue.
Sure enough, my students submit assignments clearly written by AI that state economic sustainability is profit and revenue.
AI is regurgitating decades of green-washing and even bad academic articles that state economic sustainability is about profits. I use that AI god mode site to test several AI’s at once and they’ve consistently gotten this wrong for 3 years.
I love your approach. This way, you don’t even have to bust the students for using AI!
It’s often very difficult to tell the difference between a student that uses AI and a student that performs a traditional search of the topic and just copies facts blindly and uncritically. AI writing detectors are simply not reliable enough to serve as the basis for a charge of academic misconduct. What do you do if you accuse someone of using AI, and it turns out they just happen to write in a style that’s reminiscent of AI? What do you do if someone claims they just happen to write how an AI sounds? What if someone says they just used Grammerly, so now it’s ambiguous what portion of their writing is their own? Academic misconduct and AI gets very thorny very quickly.
But your approach? Brilliant. Just give them a paper whose topic you taught them correctly, but you know AI will screw up. No need to affirmatively prove the cheater used AI. Just give the cheater a failing grade on the paper, because it clearly doesn’t reflect what you taught them. They have no ability to later argue that they’re innocent or lie that they did not in fact use AI. Their paper simply wasn’t good enough to get a passing grade.
Honestly, it’s pure genius. As a fellow educator, I commend you!
So you teach something different from the mainstream - cool. But don’t be surprised when students or AI cite others or take an alternative position.
I’m no economist but I had plenty of professors who wanted their particular theories reflected back at them.
While students should do their own reading and writing, using ‘they write mainstream ideas’ as a litmus test for writing and AI seems parochial. And I’d go so far as to say AI is becoming a standard research and writing aid like the web word processors, and you sound like teachers who ranted against those too.
Have you engaged either group in open discussion about comparing the perspectives you’re challenging? I bet several modern models could debate your philosophy on merit, I wonder if you ever gave students the chance.
So you teach something different from the mainstream - cool. But don’t be surprised when students or AI cite others or take an alternative position.
Not every class is debate. Plenty of courses are simply taught by an expert in their field, and students are graded on how well they learn from that professor’s instruction. Is it a perfect system? No. But that’s why we have experts. Some classes exist to simply establish a baseline of knowledge among the students. Such classes cannot be continuously derailed by engaging in rigorous debate about topics that experts in the field consider unambiguous and long-settled. Students are free to form their own opinions and whatever conclusions they want, but they need to demonstrate that they have at least learned the material as taught. You can believe the Universe is 6000 years old if you want. You cannot expect your astronomy professor to spend half the class debating with you about it.
A creationist student doesn’t have to believe in evolution to get an A in an evolutionary biology class. But they do have to demonstrate mastery or at least competence in the principles of evolutionary biology as taught by their professor. If they want to view the whole course as “a silly exercise in memorizing the lies of evolutionists,” well they’re free to do so. It’s a free country. Believe whatever you want. But that doesn’t mean they can just write, “God did it” to every answer on the final and still receive a passing grade.
You’re free to believe or reject anything a teacher or professor teaches you. That doesn’t mean you get out of learning the lesson entirely.
I’m pretty sure the fucking economist you’re replying to is not “teach(ing) something different from the mainstream” that’s the whole point of their post.
The whole point is the AI tools are hallucinating* completely incorrect answers and that students trying to use them as study aids and tools to learn with are going to have a lot of fake and wrong information to sort out and good luck to them knowing what is or isn’t incorrect or wrong when they’re just trying to learn a subject they know nothing about.
The only reason you or I or anyone else knows when AI hallucinates in its output is because we know stuff from our prior knowledge and can catch it that way. If you’re ignorant to a subject and trying to learn stuff you’re not going to know off hand the AI is lying to you if it sounds convincing enough for a layperson to accept.
*which I kind of hate that term because to the AI there’s no difference between truth and hallucination - it’s just output as far as the robot is concerned
In my academic field of sustainability, AI still fails to explain what economic sustainability means. It’s very simple.
I lecture and explain to my students that economic sustainability is about how we assess and manage our knowledge, innovations, wealth, and other man-made capital. I stress that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT profit and revenue.
Sure enough, my students submit assignments clearly written by AI that state economic sustainability is profit and revenue.
AI is regurgitating decades of green-washing and even bad academic articles that state economic sustainability is about profits. I use that AI god mode site to test several AI’s at once and they’ve consistently gotten this wrong for 3 years.
I love your approach. This way, you don’t even have to bust the students for using AI!
It’s often very difficult to tell the difference between a student that uses AI and a student that performs a traditional search of the topic and just copies facts blindly and uncritically. AI writing detectors are simply not reliable enough to serve as the basis for a charge of academic misconduct. What do you do if you accuse someone of using AI, and it turns out they just happen to write in a style that’s reminiscent of AI? What do you do if someone claims they just happen to write how an AI sounds? What if someone says they just used Grammerly, so now it’s ambiguous what portion of their writing is their own? Academic misconduct and AI gets very thorny very quickly.
But your approach? Brilliant. Just give them a paper whose topic you taught them correctly, but you know AI will screw up. No need to affirmatively prove the cheater used AI. Just give the cheater a failing grade on the paper, because it clearly doesn’t reflect what you taught them. They have no ability to later argue that they’re innocent or lie that they did not in fact use AI. Their paper simply wasn’t good enough to get a passing grade.
Honestly, it’s pure genius. As a fellow educator, I commend you!
So you teach something different from the mainstream - cool. But don’t be surprised when students or AI cite others or take an alternative position.
I’m no economist but I had plenty of professors who wanted their particular theories reflected back at them.
While students should do their own reading and writing, using ‘they write mainstream ideas’ as a litmus test for writing and AI seems parochial. And I’d go so far as to say AI is becoming a standard research and writing aid like the web word processors, and you sound like teachers who ranted against those too.
Have you engaged either group in open discussion about comparing the perspectives you’re challenging? I bet several modern models could debate your philosophy on merit, I wonder if you ever gave students the chance.
Not every class is debate. Plenty of courses are simply taught by an expert in their field, and students are graded on how well they learn from that professor’s instruction. Is it a perfect system? No. But that’s why we have experts. Some classes exist to simply establish a baseline of knowledge among the students. Such classes cannot be continuously derailed by engaging in rigorous debate about topics that experts in the field consider unambiguous and long-settled. Students are free to form their own opinions and whatever conclusions they want, but they need to demonstrate that they have at least learned the material as taught. You can believe the Universe is 6000 years old if you want. You cannot expect your astronomy professor to spend half the class debating with you about it.
A creationist student doesn’t have to believe in evolution to get an A in an evolutionary biology class. But they do have to demonstrate mastery or at least competence in the principles of evolutionary biology as taught by their professor. If they want to view the whole course as “a silly exercise in memorizing the lies of evolutionists,” well they’re free to do so. It’s a free country. Believe whatever you want. But that doesn’t mean they can just write, “God did it” to every answer on the final and still receive a passing grade.
You’re free to believe or reject anything a teacher or professor teaches you. That doesn’t mean you get out of learning the lesson entirely.
I’m pretty sure the fucking economist you’re replying to is not “teach(ing) something different from the mainstream” that’s the whole point of their post.
The whole point is the AI tools are hallucinating* completely incorrect answers and that students trying to use them as study aids and tools to learn with are going to have a lot of fake and wrong information to sort out and good luck to them knowing what is or isn’t incorrect or wrong when they’re just trying to learn a subject they know nothing about.
The only reason you or I or anyone else knows when AI hallucinates in its output is because we know stuff from our prior knowledge and can catch it that way. If you’re ignorant to a subject and trying to learn stuff you’re not going to know off hand the AI is lying to you if it sounds convincing enough for a layperson to accept.
*which I kind of hate that term because to the AI there’s no difference between truth and hallucination - it’s just output as far as the robot is concerned
I teach what is correct, but the incorrect mainstream understanding is what AI provides. It’s the crux of the problem I focus on in my research.