Originally posted by: O2bnVegas
That reads like an AI piece. Note the changed font, and most obviously the first sentence. Max, did you actually compose this? If so, my apologies.
Submit something to AI and this is similar to what you'll get. Not necessarily erroneous material on its face; usually related in some way to the question, but not necessarily what was requested.
I'm told that teachers are now using programs to detect AI submissions from their students. They'd already had programs that 'caught' plagiarized material. I think this is interesting. How do those work. Kevin?
Candy, it's just getting underway, and not every district I work in uses that tool, but yes, it's a thing. It's not even close to necessary, though, if a teacher structures his homework assignments properly. Example: write an essay on the general course of the Civil War, significant events, personae, etc. Fifty years ago, you could have told easily enough when a student just went scurrying to the encyclopedia and copied stuff. It's not any different if they use AI now.
But rather than battle with that at all, I give my students assignments where they have to think and analyze. For instance, rather than ask them to talk about Gettysburg, I ask them to explain what Lee had hoped to accomplish, why he lost that battle, and why it was so bloody. Anything generated by an AI bot or simply copied from the interblab will be very easy to sniff out.
And for those despairing about the ability of our youth to think and reason in these times of the interblab, I'd like to note that some of the simultaneously cleverest and laziest of our copy-and-paste students deliberately introduce factual errors, like getting dates wrong, into their essays just so it won't look like they were copied.