The irony here is that universities are struggling to teach writing skills, due to massive cheating with AI.

I mentor CS students at two local universities. The best students are using gen ai to enhance their learning and understanding (i.e. they use it as a tool instead of a crutch). The worst students are using it in attempt to “level the playing field” and are failing miserably.

It is easy to determine if someone solved a problem using AI because they can’t explain or recreate “their” solution. Detecting cheating in essays is still far more difficult.

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HarHarVeryFunny 10 hours ago | parent [-]

You could probably detect essay cheating (AI written) in the exact same way by questioning the student about it - why did they organize the essay in this way, what was their motivation for focusing on X, or expressing something as Y... Of course anyone can concoct an explanation on the fly, but it should be obvious if they are speaking from the experience of having authored it or just coming up with a post-hoc rationalization.

If they had AI write the essay, yet can still explain it as well as if they had written it themselves (ditto for code), then it would tend to indicate that they at least read it and thought about it, which I think should be more acceptable in a learning environment.

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aleph_minus_one 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> You could probably detect essay cheating (AI written) in the exact same way by questioning the student about it - why did they organize the essay in this way, what was their motivation for focusing on X, or expressing something as Y... Of course anyone can concoct an explanation on the fly, but it should be obvious if they are speaking from the experience of having authored it or just coming up with a post-hoc rationalization.

I wouldn't claim that I am bad at writing (at least in my native language, which is not English) - at least many colleagues say so. But I do insist that when writing I don't think that way. If I were to answer these question, my honest answers would be:

"why did they organize the essay in this way": I just wrote down the thoughts that came to my mind, and then gave them some structure that seemed right.

"what was their motivation for focusing on X": Either "because it felt right" or "I had to write at most x pages, and indeed it would have made sense to focus on more topics, so I focused on this arbitrary thing"

So indeed I would claim that a lot of sensible reasons why things are this way actually are post-hoc rationalizations. :-)

	▲	HarHarVeryFunny 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> So indeed I would claim that a lot of sensible reasons why things are this way actually are post-hoc rationalizations. Perhaps, but still I think that responses to questioning about an essay that the student did actually write will come a lot more quickly and naturally, even if they indicate that not much thought was put into it, than if they realize they are being called out for cheating and and have to make something up on the spot, since they didn't at least read it carefully!