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Half of college students probably already use ChatGPT to cheat, experts estimate.
They warn that revolutionary AI has created a cheating epidemic that poses a huge threat to the integrity of academia.
Rehan Haque, of artificial intelligence company Metatalent.ai, said: “We’re already at the point where AI can write entire projects, and then another AI tool can reformulate it to make AI undetectable.
‘At the moment more than half of the students use AI tools to cheat the education system during exams or essays, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that number is already higher.’
Can educators resort to written tests to tackle AI cheating?
He added, “If teachers make the mistake of ignoring the threat of AI-based cheating, I can honestly see over 90 percent of students cheating in this way. [in future].’
OpenAI’s new GPT-4 update (GPT-3 and GPT-4 are the models underlying ChatGPT) can achieve 90 percent on a wide range of exams, including the US Bar exam.
The AI bot is also capable of writing human-like essays on any topic in seconds, in response to simple text prompts.
Creator OpenAI is working on a tool to detect AI-written content, but warns that it’s not 100 percent accurate.
A study by Study.com of 203 teachers found that 26 percent of K-12 teachers had already caught at least one student cheating on the software.
Josh Blackman, Houston law professor at South Texas College of Law, wrote, “This technology should terrify all academics.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District, Seattle Public Schools, the New York Department of Education, and Oakland Unified are among the US school boards that have banned or blocked the use of ChatGPT.
At the university level, Yeshiva College in New York updated its cheating policy to include “someone/something else’s language,” banning cheating via ChatGPT.
Haque says educators could resort to “technological regression” as a temporary measure to curb AI cheating.
He said, “This could even mean going back to the old-fashioned way of writing everything down. But even then, what’s to stop a student copying an AI-produced essay from a screen?’
Rehan Haque of Metatalent.ai believes the problem is widespread – and will get worse. Narmeen Makhani, Executive Director of the ETS AI Labs
Haque believes AI detection software will evolve, but educators should move to using AI in the classroom — rather than banning it.
GoStudent research found that 59 percent of young people want to see advanced technology such as AI in the curriculum.
Haque said, “To be fair to the students, if education systems fail to adapt to a technology that Bill Gates recently described as “the most revolutionary technology in decades,” the responsibility cannot lie exclusively with them.
“Instead, teachers, examiners and educators need to recognize that technology is changing and move with it.”
AI has positive applications in the classroom, agrees Narmeen Makhani, executive director of ETS AI Labs, which creates tools that can detect AI cheating.
She said: ‘Generative AI is also being used for good purposes, such as promoting learning. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT help students more efficiently generate text and summarize information that can help them with their school work.”
Makhani said scientists in her lab have been working on strategies to detect AI — including keystroke analysis to see people editing AI-generated essays.
She said there are giveaway signs that essays are generated by AI rather than a human.
She said: “While it is very difficult for humans to detect AI-generated text, generative AI detection tools look for small patterns such as repetitive simple words or lack of inconsistencies to detect patterns typical of AI-generated text.
‘Moreover, AI models write consistent sentences, unlike humans who usually write in bursts. AI detection models also look at whether a piece of text ‘appears’ ‘random’ or ‘chaotic’ compared to text that appears non-chaotic or less ‘confusing’, which is most likely generated by AI.’
Makhani says no tool can accurately detect AI-generated text 100 percent of the time, but she and her team will continue to explore how to spot cheaters.
She says the technology offers educators a way to free the education system from focusing on memorizing facts and spitting out large amounts of text.
Says Makhani, “Educators have the opportunity to use AI tools to enhance learning and improve assessments, so they can rely less on rote learning and text generation and instead on asking questions. students to improve their understanding of concepts and their ability to analyze information.
She also believes AI tools like ChatGPT will be useful in the classroom – and to teach students skills that will be useful in tomorrow’s workplace.
Makhani said, ‘They can also enable students to use AI tools to evaluate AI outputs to both support and demonstrate higher-order skills. Generative AI tools can help educators quickly create personalized content that is socio-culturally relevant to their students and help motivate and assess students in new ways.”