Colleges should go “medieval” to students to beat the IA cheating, says the NYU manager

In a New York Times Opinion Tuesday, Vice-Prévôt from Nyu to AI and Technology in Education, Clay Shirky said that he had previously advised “committed uses” of AI where students use technology to explore ideas and seek comments, rather than “the use of lazy AI”.

But that did not work, because the students continued to use AI to write articles and skip reading. Meanwhile, tools intended to detect cheating produce too many false positives to be reliable, he added.

“Now that most of the mental efforts related to writing are optional, we need new ways to demand the work necessary for learning,” said Shirky. “This means moving away from assignments and take -out tests and to class books in class, oral exams, office hours required office hours and other assessments that call on students to demonstrate real -time knowledge.”

Such a change would mark a return to much older practices that date back to the medieval era of Europe, when books were rare and that a university education focused on oral education instead of written missions.

In medieval times, students often listened to teachers to read books, and some schools even discouraged students from writing what they heard, said Shirky. The emphasis on writing occurred hundreds of years later in Europe and reached American schools at the end of the 19th century.

“What assignments are written and which have changed over the years,” he added. “He moves again, this time far from the writing of original students carried out outside the lessons and towards something more interactive between student and teacher or at least student and teaching assistant.”

This may involve classrooms without a device because some students used AI chatbots to answer questions when called during the course.

He recognized the logistical challenges since certain classes have hundreds of students. In addition, the emphasis on class performances promotes some students more than others.

“The timed evaluation can benefit students who are good to think quickly, not students who are good to think deeply,” said Shirky. “What we could call medieval options are reactions to the sudden appearance of AI, an attempt to insist that students do work, not just pantomiming.”

Certainly, teachers also use AI, not just students. While some use it to help develop a course program, others use it to help note the trials. In some cases, this means that AI classifies an assignment generated by AI.

The use of AI by educators has also generated reactions across students. An elderly person from Northeastern University even filed an official complaint and asked for a reimbursement of tuition fees after discovering that his teacher secretly used AI tools to generate course notes.

Meanwhile, students also receive mixed messages, learning that using AI in school counts as cheating, but that not being able to use AI will harm their job prospects. At the same time, some schools have no directive on AI.

“Whatever happens then, students know that AI is there to stay, even if it scares them,” wrote Rachel Janfaza, founder of the Consulting Consulting Society, wrote in the Washington Post THURSDAY.

“They do not ask for a unique approach, and they do not all conspire to understand the strict work with which they can get away with it. What they need is that adults act as adults – and do not leave it to the first wave of AI native students to develop a technological revolution by themselves. ”