Comment by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the whole AI topic as a large crisis, as others have mentioned: put more emphasis on in-person tests and exams. Make it clear that homework assignments are for practice, learning, and feedback. If a person thinks that copy/pasting helps them, give them the freedom to so, but if as a result they fail the exams and similar in-person evaluations, then so be it. Let them fail.

I would like to hire students who actually have skills and know their material. Or even better, if AI is actually the amazing learning tool many claim then it should enhance their learning and as a result help them succeed in tests without any AI assistance. If they can't, then clearly AI was a detriment to them and their learning and they lack the ability to think critically about their own abilities.

If everyone is supposed to use AI anyway, why should I ever prefer a candidate who is not able to do anything without AI assistance over someone who can? And if you hold the actual opinion that proper ai-independent knowledge is not required, then why should I hire a student at all instead of buying software solutions from AI companies (and maybe put a random person without a relevant degree in front of it)?

It's a huge problem. I have several friends in university who have had assignments flagged as AI. They have had entire units failed and forced to retake semesters which is not cheap.

Even if you fight it, the challenge goes into the next semester and pushes out your study timeline and associated costs.

> put more emphasis on in-person tests and exams. Make it clear that homework assignments are for practice, learning, and feedback. If a person thinks that copy/pasting helps them

Works for high school, not so much for university degrees. What's crazy is universities have an incentive to flag your work as AI generated as it forces the student to pay more money and is difficult to challenge.

One friend now uses a dashcam to record themselves when writing an assignment so they can prove no AI was used when they are eventually flagged.

Yeah bad choice of words on my part, I apologize. I can imagine that things are pretty chaotic right now and that there are quite a few problems like the one you describe. When I said I don't see a crisis here I meant that more in a more overarching sense and that I see this as solvable.

> Works for high school, not so much for university degrees.

I don't know about that. I can't speak for the US, but at the university where I got my degrees (Math & CS) and later worked prerequisite in-person tests to be allowed to take a given exam were not rare. Most modules had lectures (professor), tutorials (voluntary in-person bonus exercises and tutors to ask questions) and exercise groups where solutions to mandatory exercises were discussed. In the latter sometimes an additional part of the exam requirements was to present and explain a solution at least once or twice over the course of the semester. And some had small, mandatory bi-weekly tests as part of the requirement too.

Obviously I can understand that this would not work equally well in each kind of academic programme.

> Yeah bad choice of words on my part, I apologize.

All good!

> I can't speak for the US

I just had to respond to this as the implication of being American touched a nerve, haha. Australian here.

> > put more emphasis on in-person tests and exams. Make it clear that homework assignments are for practice, learning, and feedback. If a person thinks that copy/pasting helps them

> Works for high school, not so much for university degrees. What's crazy is universities have an incentive to flag your work as AI generated as it forces the student to pay more money and is difficult to challenge.

When I started uni (slovenia, 2007) the rules were simple: You are adults. The final exam (written + oral) is 100% of your grade. We don’t have the time or willingness to police what you do. Strongly recommend attending classes and doing homework but whatever it’s your life. If you get high enough scores on the optional midterms, you can skip the written portion of the exam.

It was pretty great. Yes we all tried to cram for exams at the last moment. No it didn’t work very well. Needing 2 or 3 tries to pass was common.

Then later we got the bologna system. Professors stopped bragging about fail rates. Students passing became an actual thing they were evaluated on. Homework became graded, midterms were mandatory and part of your grade, attendance was tracked, etc.

College became like high school. More people passed but I think something was lost about teaching adulthood.

For the record: I didn’t graduate. My freelance business got too busy and I could not keep up with both.

> more emphasis on in-person tests and exams

$$$

There’s a lot of interacting parts as to why many places have arrived where we are where cheap ghost writers (AI or not) can so easily negatively impact education. But it pretty much all comes down to costs.

Go ahead and let a random person do it. Degrees were gate keeping anyway

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