r/Professors • u/norbertus • 1d ago
Administration Enabling AI Cheating
So, my provost just announced that the "AI Taskforce" had concluded, and a "highlight" of their report involved:
Microsoft Copilot Chat, featuring Enterprise Data Protection, is an AI service that is now available to all students, faculty, and staff at UWM. https://copilot.cloud.microsoft
Cool. So the University is now paying Microsoft to enable students to better cheat with AI?
WTF?
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u/DrMaybe74 Writing Instructor. CC, US. Ai sucks. 1d ago
I think we may work for the same diploma mill college.
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u/solresol 1d ago
It's OK -- they have chosen the worst possible AI service. It's impractical and mostly useless. They probably didn't pay very much for it.
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 1d ago
It likely came free with Microsoft 365. A subscription to chat GPT would be useful.
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u/ay1mao 1d ago
This is so disappointing.
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u/billyions 2h ago
The real world uses tools. It serves no purpose to handicap our students.
They must learn skills valuable enough to earn a living with the free and low cost tools available to everyone.
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u/banjovi68419 9h ago
Administrators are idiots. So is everyone else though. We're cutting our own throats and higher ed won't exist soon. Why would citizens pay money to 1) CLEARLY not learn and 2) waste time when they could just do everything with AI in like... 8th grade.
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u/billyions 2h ago
Higher Ed will continue.
But it's very true that certain courses - those that teach skills that businesses and organizations can get for free or very low cost will not be viable.
We need to figure out what value our students (using these tools) can offer and teach that. We will adapt and evolve.
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u/MaleficentGold9745 3h ago
Yep. I tried to bring up AI cheating with an administrator this week trying to explain that my grades have been inflated, and the response was, "See, you're just an excellent instructor!" LOL
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u/billyions 2h ago
Content that reads like a free tool wrote it can be assessed accordingly. No one needs it.
Remind students that if they want to replace themselves with a free tool, so will everyone else.
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u/MaleficentGold9745 2h ago
Right?! That's the selling point that our administrators are trying to push. This is the future! Teach them how to use the tool, or they will be out of a job! The whole thing is just such a shitshow I don't blame my peers from retiring early
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u/billyions 2h ago
We can tell when it's just cut and paste from the AI. It's those students who are losing out.
There's a way to use these tools without just replacing ourselves.
We can do more, more efficiently than ever before. We need to set our sights higher.
What can we ask of them that was not possible before?
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u/MaleficentGold9745 2h ago
None of that is possible if students can't read, write, or possess any critical thinking skills. That's not what's happening, and I think it is the disconnect between the faculty and administration.
Edit, sorry talk to text shenanigans!
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u/billyions 1h ago
True. Literacy is critical if we don't want to be taken advantage of. Reading - and knowing what you want to write - is key.
I wonder if students could be tasked with figuring out how we recognize ai-generated content? Can they back it up with details?
Can they map the patterns? Count the emojis? Compare a living wage to $20 a month?
Propose the most valuable human skills over the next 3 generations?
Address the impact on environments of our key industries?
Compare pros and cons of isolationism vs international collaborations?
Evaluate mortgage decisions?
Logistics of global food supply?
Track the numbers of pollinators geographically and predict the impacts over the next two generations?
Estimate ice mass and sea levels in New York City?
Develop production and distribution means for the next communicable disease?
Evaluate the costs of hiring four employees vs two ai-enabled employees?
Review regulations that help / hurt the availability of affordable housing? ( Tax advantages for primary residences vs vacation or rental properties)?
Chart literacy and life expectancy rates across nations? Propose explanations?
Analyze the language, themes, characters, or other that makes Shakespeare so compelling? Quantify them.
Propose a business, develop a comprehensive plan, website, branding, and social media or marketing plan?
It's not like the world is short of challenges.
We just need to engage our students in the various and many ways they are needed and truly valuable.
They want to be worth much more than $20/month - and we / the world needs them.
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u/billyions 3h ago
It's a disruptor. Skills that can be done by a machine will increasingly be offloaded to machines.
What can we ask of our students - in any discipline - that was too much to ask before these tools become available?
It's changing work, it's changing lives, it's changing education.
Before, we might have asked students to prepare a budget. Now we can ask for a comprehensive business plan includeing a budget. We might have asked for a creative logo design - now we ask for a full set of branded artifacts. The ones where students actively push back and drive the process will be much better than a passive delegation.
Those who excel will still win. Those who can be replaced, will be replaced. It's as true for our students as it is for us. How can we leverage tools to move our field forward?
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 1d ago
Writing needs to evolve similarly to mathematics in the past. Before calculators, mental math ... remembering your times tables and division tables to 12x12 was essential for understanding the subject. Now there is a lot more emphasis on problem solving and understanding numbers more deeply. (The "new math" that some think is useless).
Language models (LLMs) function like writing calculators, so we should implement a writing exam where students compose one to two-page essays using pen and paper. This should be paired with lessons on the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs, teaching students to view them as tools, not replacements for their own thinking. It's important to show that LLMs recognize their own limitations.
To help my writing process, I used these Grammarly AI prompts: Prompts created by Grammarly - "Improve it" - "Shorten it"
Improve as in I wrote the post then let a LLM clean it up. IMHO that shouldn't count as having cheated... students should have to "show their work" in the form of the raw prompt version.
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u/Practical-Charge-701 19h ago
LLM’s are not like calculators, and that’s a dangerous myth. Calculators are accurate. In fact, they’ll give you the exact same answer to the exact same problem. They don’t just make up answers to paper over ignorance.
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u/norbertus 2h ago
That's a really good point.
Additionally, nobody gets confused as to whether or not a calculator has a mind.
LLM's pose an ontological problem that calculators don't, mainly: deception is part of their design goal.
LLm's are designed such that a reasonable person might mistake their output for the result of a person with a mind.
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 17h ago
In the sense that they offload some of the thinking to a device they are like calculators. As for calculators always being accurate etc etc. They weren't always like that.
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u/Front-Possession-555 14h ago
Accurate to the extent that the user knows what the right answer is. The analogy is apt because I, a complete math dummy, might be able to get some result with a calculator but I couldn’t tell you an integer from an axis. It had numbers in it so it must be right if the calculator says so??
And that’s where I think there’s a lot of room for improvement at the assessment level. Writing profs know style, syntax, and grammar, then get mad that AI produces accurate output based on what’s being assessed. What I hear when I hear complaints about “grading a bunch of AI” is the assumption that students know the right answer and just choose to be “lazy” about it. I doubt a math prof—when faced with a bunch of students using calculators and getting wrong answers—would ban calculators. In fact, the math profs I know require additional proof of the completed work because they know assessing output alone is meaningless.
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u/v_ult 22h ago
LLMs are not capable of “recognizing” things
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 20h ago
You know what I meant they respond like they understand that they have limitations. They know that they don't have eyes and that they're basically just language models.
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u/v_ult 20h ago
It’s just important to push back against tech bro speak like LLMs know or understand or realize things
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 17h ago
"Tech bro speak"? It's just a way of colloquially describing it. The real inside "tech bro" way of talking about this is to call it a hallucination. People accept that word due to a negative connotation.
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u/DionysiusRedivivus FT, HUM, CC, FL USA 6h ago
How is doing math with or without a calculator or abacus for that matter analogous to formulating a sentence in conversation? Because do that several times and record it in squiggly lines and voila - you have writing. There’s a big difference between doing math and being able to communicate verbally.
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 6h ago
Beyond just calculating with numbers math is a form of communication. Once you're talking about geometry and algebra and math beyond that still you're talking about a language. Once you are at those levels you're talking about a language that will be universal.
E=Mc2
You could probably show that to a space fairing alien squid and because they would know the same basic relationships they would know what E stood for, and have some idea of Mc2 was.
Indeed for a species very different from us but intelligent as we are math would be the very first thing we would communicate with.
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u/DionysiusRedivivus FT, HUM, CC, FL USA 6h ago
How’s that compare to a child saying “pass the juice, please.” Or “get out of the road, there is a car coming?” Articulating a physics formula to warn me of an impending collision is neither functional nor intuitive (within a cultural group).
Mathematical and scientific models are specialized and descriptive subsets of communication, but by no stretch are they skills developed as toddlers which simply need to be transposed from noise to equivalent symbols and syntax by children (granting shapes and numbers are names imposed on recognized patterns and not functioning as formulas).3
u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 5h ago edited 5h ago
Both the mathematical equation and the sentences that you uttered communicate an idea. Granted, using a vector equation to represent passing juice would be overkill, but one could do it.
You sound like the conehead aliens from the old Saturday Night Live sketch doing it.
🍹(0,0) ==>🍹(10cmx ,20cmy)
See a mathematical vector equation that accomplishes asking someone to pass the juice. Maybe for fun, I can try writing a differential equation to describe the motion.
Math is just another language, but I could show that equation to someone from China, and they'd have some idea what it meant.
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u/billyions 2h ago
We write Alexa "skills".
Human languages follow rules that can (and have been) programmed and codified.
When we ask the weather, it's AI that provides the report.
These tools are passing the Turing Test - it's hard to tell whether we're interacting with a human or machine.
The best will use tools to master skillful communication. The least will become obsolete.
Communicators are needed as much now as ever. We can teach masterful skills, directed at real world challenges.
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u/billyions 2h ago
Exactly. They type much faster than I can.
When a person is driving the process, it is possible to generate a much better outcome, faster by using AI. It is also equally possible to get completely off track and waste hours.
The ability to generate novel, usual artifacts remains in the hands of the humans. We need to incorporate tools and challenge ourselves to do more, of more value, or at a faster pace than before.
No one teaches pony express delivery services anymore. As always, whole industries/areas will adapt, dwindle, or thrive.
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u/banjovi68419 9h ago
Comparing AI to calculators is bafflingly wrong. Like I don't feel like the same species as you right now.
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u/billyions 2h ago
They are though. Statistical calculators that process input language, parse it, and suggest a recommended response. It's math. Lots of math trained on a large corpus of data.
They write code to generate spreadsheets.
They write code to generate code.
They generate human-sounding text. Overly symmetrical machine-like text, but legible.
When competent humans leverage tools, they will typically outperform both the tools by themselves - and humans that don't use tools.
The game will be won by those who leverage tools to do more than they ever thought possible.
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u/uttamattamakin Lecturer, Physics, R2 6h ago
Yes I am like one of those species of the past unafraid of the fire while you were afraid of the fire. Which one of those species was the better one?
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u/JohnHammond7 2h ago
It's okay. These people can continue living in the dark. It will just mean more jobs for us in the future while they're still screaming with pitchforks.
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