Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Zero Trust Homework is a fascinating idea, as described in the article, but I don't know how many teachers will adapt because they'll just end up confusing themselves. When you read too many lies, you might start forgetting the truth yourself.

Instead, what I think there will be a much greater short term market for, is a system that will run the teacher's homework assignment (with variations) against GPT-3, ChatGPT, and similar, and will cache the results. Then, when students submit the homework in their LMS, it will automatically compare the cached results for repeated sentences and paragraphs and flag the submission if it matches the AI results too closely. I expect TurnItIn will do something like this eventually, but what if somebody beats them to the punch?

If I had a million dollars, I'd have it built overnight and then marketed to every college, ASAP. I'd tell every sales agent to have teachers and college executives try TextGPT, panic, and sign immediately. I'd sign a million contracts before TurnItIn knew what hit them. Then, once suddenly and so quickly entrenched, I'd extend it into a TurnItIn competitor.

While I can (unfortunately) see this happening - it seems incredibly futile and pointless to try and fight such an arms race. When AI-supported writing becomes the norm having students write essays without AI-assistance will be like trying to force students to do complex arithmetic without calculators.

Universities and schools need to accept that writing essays without AI support will simply not be a useful skill anymore, much like doing complex arithmetic without a calculator is not a useful skill anymore. Instead, they should focus on teaching students how to use AI support as a tool to write better, more comprehensive texts, rather than try and force students to write without it. That will ultimately make the students more productive members of a society in which AI supported writing is ubiquitous.

>Universities and schools need to accept that writing essays without AI support will simply not be a useful skill anymore

It’s kind of mind-blowing that anyone could think this.

You’re posting on a website for essays. Small essays, generally speaking, if we restrict ourselves to the comments section, but essays nonetheless. You yourself just wrote one, because you wanted to express your thoughts on an issue and you wanted to solicit responses from others.

Would you be fine with a future where all written text on the internet, everywhere, was generated by AI? Do you not see any problems with that?

The point of writing is that you write to express your thoughts. Not anyone else’s. If it doesn’t come from you, then what’s the point?

I can’t envision a future where people voluntarily cease all written communication. Unless you’re a hardcore singulatarian, and you want to plug yourself into the Matrix so you never have to interact with other people again.

> Would you be fine with a future where all written text on the internet, everywhere, was generated by AI?

The whole point of this thread is it doesn't really matter what we think is fine or what we want. The future is unstoppable and these tools especially so. Adapt or die.

Feel free to express your thoughts. But I browse for content. And if AI has better content than you, then I prefer AI.

Note that if we're talking about triangulating human sentiment, it becomes a different story.

Who is going to write the content these AI are trained on?

I mean eventually AI will be writing most of the content.

By the way, that's not a loop. The feedback from humans will keep it from going full skynet-y. Also, the tweaks of all the little S/W neurons keeps it fresh too.

Don't you use spellcheck? word autocomplete? the bigger version of autocomplete that does the rest of the sentence?

Yeah, a whole essay is a lot different than just a few words here and there.

But a lot arguments here are that you have to draw a line somewhere between spellcheck and full AI.

And the article is arguing that you can't do that, there is no line. AI, just like spellcheck, is coming and there is not really anything you can to to stop it. Sure, you can be a digital luddite and spellcheck all your own words, but we all know that not going to cut it in the marketplace. Same with AI.

> Would you be fine with a future where all written text on the internet, everywhere, was generated by AI? Do you not see any problems with that?

if it makes the discussions more poignant and concise, why not?

Do you also walk every where? Or do you use a transportation vehicle? When a tool makes something better, there's no reason not to use it. The replies being written by an AI doesn't make it less of a reply - you can judge the replies objectively, rather than from where it is sourced.

AI is quite good at style transfer. You can already give GPT a few paragraphs of your own writing and have it write in your style. Or anyone's style. Your solution may work for the naive case, but it's a losing arms race.

The problem is there are infinity different permutations of any outputs from GPT and such.

That's not an issue if the goal is to make a quick buck by utilizing FUD against collages.

It's probably even good, as you'll be able to upsell them the "improved detection logic" for another premium.

Classic SV tactics

It will likely be difficult to detect LLM-generated text on any individual piece of writing.

That probably means the approach that will take hold is more systemic — have some writing take place under more controlled conditions, then use authorship analysis to detect writing that is inconsistent with the controlled text. It will not be easy!

Students will start adding "in the style of {insert writer}" on their prompts which will probably be enough to counteract this.

Part of the homework crisis solution is never try to counter AI. It should be used in the system's favor: Allow students to use AI but make them submit the prompt they used.

Note that chat gpt isn't deterministic. You can use the exact same prompt as someone else and get a different result.

Hell, you can ask chat gpt to create a prompt for itself. E.g.:

> create a prompt for summarizing the great gadsby

> Summarize the key events and themes of "The Great Gatsby" in a few sentences. Be sure to include information about the novel's characters and the setting, as well as any major conflicts or themes that are explored in the story.

Just abolish homework.

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