Anonymous wrote:I actually don’t think having a bot edit is cheating.

Anonymous wrote:Soon the college application process will exclude standardized test scores, essays, demographic information, and anything else that might distinguish applicants due to cheating, favoritism, and/or discrimination.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Many top schools give examples of essays written by students that were accepted. JHU is one that immediately comes to mind. They are essentially providing you with the blueprint for the AI. Also, there are expensive college admissions consultants with websites that will provide an example of essays that kids used for Harvard, Stanford, etc. They could be lying, but I don't think so. Again, you can feed those into the AI to train it.

So AI spits out an amalgam of personal anecdotes, how does that go anywhere?

Here is some advice…if you don’t understand it or how it works…just don’t comment.

It is impossible to respond to your comment. It’s as though someone shows you a computer and your response is “it’s just a plastic box with some circuits inside…how will that go anywhere?”

Exactly, what's going on here? So many relying on denial and wishful thinking.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Many top schools give examples of essays written by students that were accepted. JHU is one that immediately comes to mind. They are essentially providing you with the blueprint for the AI. Also, there are expensive college admissions consultants with websites that will provide an example of essays that kids used for Harvard, Stanford, etc. They could be lying, but I don't think so. Again, you can feed those into the AI to train it.

So AI spits out an amalgam of personal anecdotes, how does that go anywhere?

Here is some advice…if you don’t understand it or how it works…just don’t comment.

It is impossible to respond to your comment. It’s as though someone shows you a computer and your response is “it’s just a plastic box with some circuits inside…how will that go anywhere?”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Many top schools give examples of essays written by students that were accepted. JHU is one that immediately comes to mind. They are essentially providing you with the blueprint for the AI. Also, there are expensive college admissions consultants with websites that will provide an example of essays that kids used for Harvard, Stanford, etc. They could be lying, but I don't think so. Again, you can feed those into the AI to train it.

So AI spits out an amalgam of personal anecdotes, how does that go anywhere?

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Many top schools give examples of essays written by students that were accepted. JHU is one that immediately comes to mind. They are essentially providing you with the blueprint for the AI. Also, there are expensive college admissions consultants with websites that will provide an example of essays that kids used for Harvard, Stanford, etc. They could be lying, but I don't think so. Again, you can feed those into the AI to train it.

Anonymous wrote:My kid entered a draft essay into an AI bot.
It’s now amazing.
And then we entered the result into an AI “test”…..and it passed and said 100% human generated.
The AI version really was better than the human version…it was a “why” essay with a lot of personalization.


I’m just shocked.

Anonymous wrote:My kid entered a draft essay into an AI bot.
It’s now amazing.
And then we entered the result into an AI “test”…..and it passed and said 100% human generated.
The AI version really was better than the human version…it was a “why” essay with a lot of personalization.


I’m just shocked.

Anonymous wrote:Agree detecting AI may be impossible. But detecting and rejecting tedious writing is tried and true. Sorry, blowhards.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Many top schools give examples of essays written by students that were accepted. JHU is one that immediately comes to mind. They are essentially providing you with the blueprint for the AI. Also, there are expensive college admissions consultants with websites that will provide an example of essays that kids used for Harvard, Stanford, etc. They could be lying, but I don't think so. Again, you can feed those into the AI to train it.