this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
119 points (98.4% liked)
chapotraphouse
13820 readers
955 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm not sure that I agree that the model "only tests are graded" is a good ideal. What is generally thought of as homework, sure, that is counter-productive to grade, but for things like essays, projects, etc. I'm not sure that's true. There is only so much essay you can write in one sitting, and the practice polishing, restructuring and generally just increased time spent thinking through that essay, that is afforded by it being done at home, is valuable.
And I think you underestimate what an LLM can (at least in theory) produce. Especially if you let students pick topics or take liberties with structure, etc. at all. What you're asking of teachers, when you say that students successfully using LLMs to pass their class is an indictment of their coursework, is an obligation to always provide sufficiently novel prompts and questions and such that an "AI" can't answer well.
I agree that an LLM probably can't convincingly synthesize two concepts that were both represented separately in its training data (though I expect they'll get closer to being able to pass this off for non-complex examples), but what if the synthesis itself was in the training data? In HS and undergrad level courses, how often are the topics at hand really novel enough to rely on that not being the case? Or how often is the syllabus really flexible enough to allow teachers to reframe all assessments into synthesis questions? And as these companies get better at incorporating fresh material, how often will teachers have to completely rethink their coursework to keep up. This isn't a treadmill that it's reasonable to expect teachers to get on or condemn them for being imperfect at detecting.
The problem isn't that teachers can't tell, it's that they can't prove it. The difference between a student who isn't really getting it 100% but is trying and one who used AI and the slop it put out doesn't quite make logical sense is not that cut and dry and they don't deserve the same grade.
As a matter of practicality, what you describe may become necessary for serious educational institutions, but I wouldn't lay that on the teachers or say that it's ideal in any abstract sense, absent LLMs.
Essays should be done in class if they are graded. Not to add a time crunch, but the opposite: at-home assignments leads to unrealistic and often classist expectations of homework time and parental/tutor support. Yes, spending time writing alone is valuable for learning. So is homework. Neither should be scored for a student's grade. At-home essays suffer from the same rampant cheating that homework does, which does a disservice to everyone involved in terms of learning. It's important to distinguish evaluations from the act of learning itself, the two are not synonymous: if students' essays are to be graded, they should be done under proctorship and with time and venue alotted for fairness, subject to special cases. Many standardized tests have essay portions and for all the problems with standardized testing, it is appropriate that they don't let test takers go home and mull over it for as long as their economic and support sotiation allows.
Writing essays in class runs into a time crunch in most primary and secondary schools because each class is alotted an arbitrary hourish window once per day. But there are schools that do 2+ hour sessions and have off days, making this practical. A student can write a rough draft one day, turn it in, get feedback, and then polish and turn it in for a grade. And universities can always dedicate appropriate amounts of class time, they just don't want to pay TAs for anything that can be turned into homework time. Too busy doing financialized real estate schemes instead.
Re: LLMs, they can produce essays yep. This is an indictment of a course that grades take-home essays. The course was already inappropriately constructed. The LLM didn't cause the problem here, it just exacerbated the existing problem that manifests as standard cheating (paying/bullying for essays), generally accepted soft cheating (parents write the essay), generally accepted classist legs up (parents help but don't write it/tutors do the same), and the inequalities in free time that impacts students heavily enough already.
Then it has a good chance of regurgitating it. But this is very close to reusing test questions, which is already bad practice and leads to cheating. It's true that an LLM will solve a problem that none of the students have seen if the teacher's strategy of synthesis is to Google for examples, though. That pary is unfortunate but an assessment shouldn't be done in the context where someone can use an LLM anyways. Either way it's not synthesis.
The topics aren't novel at all. But that doesn't really have anything to do with rote memorization regurgitation vs. synthesis. Synthesis questions are often new and different, even just changing the words used for a biological process for a question will strip memorization and force a focus on concepts. Add a follow up question to relate it to something else that was learned and you get synthesis. This is actually a very easy kind of test to write if you practice it.
Assessments should be done in-person. In-person assessments can include simple recall questions. At-home work that is simple recall questions can already be solved by just Googling things. And you're describing a problem in course design. It's not individual teachers' faults that schooling is broken.
Re: the rest, you seem to think that I am picking on teachers. Not sure why.