AI essays - holy moly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I asked AI to draft a couple essays using different parameters or scenarios. The results were pure crap.

At least nothing sounding at all like any 17 yr old I ever met would write. Maybe we’re just not elite enough.

No, but it’s likely you don’t know how to train the AI.

It’s not overly complicated but it does require a bit of effort.

I need some AI training.

Yes, most of us "old" folks do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For editing, colleges are fine with it. OP looks like you’re ok.


Georgia Tech: "In the same way you would not copy directly from any other source you may incorporate into the writing process, you should not copy and paste directly out of any AI platform or submit work that you did not originally create. Instead, approach and consider any interaction with an AI tool as a learning experience that may help you generate ideas, provide alternative phrasing options, and organize your thoughts. Ultimately, we want to read and hear your unique and valuable writing style."

I think even by next year's admissions cycle, many schools will provide guidance like this. Heck, I can see colleges asking that you demonstrate you know how to use AI when completing some task/essay as part of admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know much about AI and my impressions and thoughts may be be wrong. However, I do casually follow developments from a birds-eye view. With, this a few points:

A key problem with AI detectors are lots of false positives, i.e., your DC essay etc. may be identified as AI generated even if it wasn't.

I suspect and worry that people, laymen and professors, will also have many false positives when deciding if a piece of writing was AI generated (fully or partly). I haven't seen this point made a lot, but it is an obvious issue to me, and look no further than the first few comments in this thread for evidence.

- "Wow, your kid must be a crap writer if an AI generated essay was 'amazing'"; "Certain you don't know good writing...also suspect there is no "kid."" But, luckily, DCUM posters do know good writing and can beat an AI bot - they will let you know when they see it!

- Professors will beat an AI bot over the course of a semester - the professor agrees and will find cheaters to show it.

The capability of generative AI relevant to essay writing is improving extremely rapidly and has become very, very good. It may be that AI bots don't know what a good essay that "stands out" to an admission office looks like and has limited ability to directly "train" on that. But, then virtually no applicant will know it either. Also, it is not fully understood how AI bots do learn as they use an incomprehensible amount of data and "learn" things that they were not asked to learned. So, they may be and very soon become much better than we feel comfortable with.

- "you don’t know good writing if you think these things write in a way that will make someone stand out in admissions." But HS parents do know what these things don't know - it's a heroic assumption.

Dismissing AI is a mistake IMO.

The false positive issue is so prevelant that many schools will no longer use detectors. The bad press and possible lawsuits (I think there is one happening in Texas from a professor that failed a student claiming AI based on a false positive) from accusing a student of cheating outweighs catching the scofflaws.

[Anonymous]

AI essays scream AI. It’s so easy to identify.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly…..
What he had written had personal anecdotes and stories in it but it wasn’t coherent enough and the AI draft had more poignancy, descriptive words, and honestly just tighter writing.

The orig draft was just ok. It sounded unpolished. It’s like an editor took a pen to it.

This took a story, made it poignant and emotional and just tightened it all up. Kid will refit now and add more description and then ask us to edit again.

Let’s see. It actually was really good to get over a writing block/hump.

um no, it’s cheating.

I don’t think so. It’s like working with an essay editor.

Yeah, I'm not sure in a year or so we will think using AI to write/revise our essays or anything we write will be considered cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I took a lot of creative writing type classes in college. We had to read our classmates' short stories every week. It was SO obvious we our favorite writers were. One guy sounded like Ray Bradbury. Another guy like Albert Camus. It got to be a joke.

AI fiction is a little bit like that.

That’s funny. I went through a period of writing “Cheever-esque” short stories, so I guess I would have fit right in to your class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop pretending the AI bots can’t produce quality work. Many heads of admission at the most elite colleges say it produces essays in the top 1% if you know how to train the AI.

Funny how everyone on DCUM thinks they are Shakespeare.

I agree. Need to find some examples to show here.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the guest was a professor and someone who studies AI. His prediction is that the college essay totally goes away, in short-order, due to the quality of AI essays. Additionally, he thinks that schools need to be moving a lot faster to change the way they teach to account for AI. It's not going away and it's time to reinvent the classroom experience to account for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son uses it in school all the time. Think they all do.

+1 DS tells me he uses it like google.

Slightly off topic since I'm not talking about essays specifically, but his AP PreCalc teacher yesterday encouraged the class to use it to generate problems that would be on an AP exam since they have no prior materials to learn from yet. After doing the problems, he told them to ask it for answers with explanations.

Teachers/colleges will work with it because kids are going to use it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son uses it in school all the time. Think they all do.

+1 DS tells me he uses it like google.

Slightly off topic since I'm not talking about essays specifically, but his AP PreCalc teacher yesterday encouraged the class to use it to generate problems that would be on an AP exam since they have no prior materials to learn from yet. After doing the problems, he told them to ask it for answers with explanations.

Teachers/colleges will work with it because kids are going to use it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son uses it in school all the time. Think they all do.

+1 DS tells me he uses it like google.

Slightly off topic since I'm not talking about essays specifically, but his AP PreCalc teacher yesterday encouraged the class to use it to generate problems that would be on an AP exam since they have no prior materials to learn from yet. After doing the problems, he told them to ask it for answers with explanations.

Teachers/colleges will work with it because kids are going to use it.

how does the teacher know the LLM is generating correct answers and explanations?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop pretending the AI bots can’t produce quality work. Many heads of admission at the most elite colleges say it produces essays in the top 1% if you know how to train the AI.

Funny how everyone on DCUM thinks they are Shakespeare.

I agree. Need to find some examples to show here.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the guest was a professor and someone who studies AI. His prediction is that the college essay totally goes away, in short-order, due to the quality of AI essays. Additionally, he thinks that schools need to be moving a lot faster to change the way they teach to account for AI. It's not going away and it's time to reinvent the classroom experience to account for it.

I hope he is right. Between editors and AI, it is a completely uneven playing field, rife for abuse and cheating. It is virtually meaningless.

What we need are nationwide, proctored essays where kids sit down in school and answer an essay question or two "live," in an in-person, classroom setting. It could be incorporated into the Common App somehow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Exactly…..
What he had written had personal anecdotes and stories in it but it wasn’t coherent enough and the AI draft had more poignancy, descriptive words, and honestly just tighter writing.

The orig draft was just ok. It sounded unpolished. It’s like an editor took a pen to it.

This took a story, made it poignant and emotional and just tightened it all up. Kid will refit now and add more description and then ask us to edit again.

Let’s see. It actually was really good to get over a writing block/hump.

um no, it’s cheating.

I don’t think so. It’s like working with an essay editor.

It’s coauthorship. Big discussion in academia. If I co-write the results of my study with AI do I list the ai as a coauthor in the journal etc, We coauthor all the time and it’s not cheating as long as you acknowledge

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop pretending the AI bots can’t produce quality work. Many heads of admission at the most elite colleges say it produces essays in the top 1% if you know how to train the AI.

Funny how everyone on DCUM thinks they are Shakespeare.

I agree. Need to find some examples to show here.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the guest was a professor and someone who studies AI. His prediction is that the college essay totally goes away, in short-order, due to the quality of AI essays. Additionally, he thinks that schools need to be moving a lot faster to change the way they teach to account for AI. It's not going away and it's time to reinvent the classroom experience to account for it.

I hope he is right. Between editors and AI, it is a completely uneven playing field, rife for abuse and cheating. It is virtually meaningless.

What we need are nationwide, proctored essays where kids sit down in school and answer an essay question or two "live," in an in-person, classroom setting. It could be incorporated into the Common App somehow.

Isn’t this just … a standardized test?

But yeah, LLM are going to end up privileging time-limited in class tests, as opposed to writing research papers. Maybe students will also have to do oral examinations to show mastery. Too bad for the kids who have different types of intelligence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I took a lot of creative writing type classes in college. We had to read our classmates' short stories every week. It was SO obvious we our favorite writers were. One guy sounded like Ray Bradbury. Another guy like Albert Camus. It got to be a joke.

AI fiction is a little bit like that.

Okay, but these favorite authors *did* have recognizable styles. Many people acknowledge creativity begins with copying, then personal voice breaks through. AI not so much, it depends on the data sets. Train AI on AI, model collapse. Maliciously corrupting training sets is already a field of study. We're all heading to a DOS of written word. There's a hint of glee in the responses here: AOs will read rounds of tedious essays that can't be distinguished from AI...so no more essays...kid who hates writing is a lock.

Yet good writing did exist, sometimes in admissions essays, sometimes even at writing workshops.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop pretending the AI bots can’t produce quality work. Many heads of admission at the most elite colleges say it produces essays in the top 1% if you know how to train the AI.

Funny how everyone on DCUM thinks they are Shakespeare.

I agree. Need to find some examples to show here.

I listened to a podcast the other day where the guest was a professor and someone who studies AI. His prediction is that the college essay totally goes away, in short-order, due to the quality of AI essays. Additionally, he thinks that schools need to be moving a lot faster to change the way they teach to account for AI. It's not going away and it's time to reinvent the classroom experience to account for it.

I hope he is right. Between editors and AI, it is a completely uneven playing field, rife for abuse and cheating. It is virtually meaningless.

What we need are nationwide, proctored essays where kids sit down in school and answer an essay question or two "live," in an in-person, classroom setting. It could be incorporated into the Common App somehow.

We just need AI graders...