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Author Topic: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat  (Read 346 times)

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Offline PeteS in CA

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These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
« on: September 04, 2020, 05:19:15 pm »
These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/2/21419012/edgenuity-online-class-ai-grading-keyword-mashing-students-school-cheating-algorithm-glitch

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On Monday, Dana Simmons came downstairs to find her 12-year-old son, Lazare, in tears. He’d completed the first assignment for his seventh-grade history class on Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning. He’d received a 50 out of 100. That wasn’t on a practice test — it was his real grade.
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At first, Simmons tried to console her son. “I was like well, you know, some teachers grade really harshly at the beginning,” said Simmons, who is a history professor herself. Then, Lazare clarified that he’d received his grade less than a second after submitting his answers. A teacher couldn’t have read his response in that time, Simmons knew — her son was being graded by an algorithm.

Simmons watched Lazare complete more assignments. She looked at the correct answers, which Edgenuity revealed at the end. She surmised that Edgenuity’s AI was scanning for specific keywords that it expected to see in students’ answers. And she decided to game it.

Now, for every short-answer question, Lazare writes two long sentences followed by a disjointed list of keywords — anything that seems relevant to the question. “The questions are things like... ‘What was the advantage of Constantinople’s location for the power of the Byzantine empire,’” Simmons says. “So you go through, okay, what are the possible keywords that are associated with this? Wealth, caravan, ship, India, China, Middle East, he just threw all of those words in.”

For-profit colleges like University of Phoenix that Obama wanted to shut down have been doing online-only clases for a decade or two. Why were so many US colleges and elementary/secondary public schools caught so flat-footed that they resort to stupidity like this?!
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If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Offline EdinVA

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Re: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2020, 05:22:46 pm »
This is not AI... This is just looking for keywords.

AI included deductive reasoning and ability to learn...
"Journalists" are so stupid...
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Offline PeteS in CA

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Re: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2020, 11:22:03 pm »
Quote from: EdinVA on September 04, 2020, 05:22:46 pm
This is not AI... This is just looking for keywords.

AI included deductive reasoning and ability to learn...
"Journalists" are so stupid...

As best I can tell, the use of "AI" was by The Verge. I don't change titles of articles unless the title is so long it gets truncated in the Subject line by Simple Machines' forum SW. That Edgenuity uses very basic/crude keyword search for grading should even have PSs that use Edgenuity's program POed. Computerized buzzword search is so 1999!
« Last Edit: September 04, 2020, 11:23:41 pm by PeteS in CA »
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If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Offline EdinVA

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Re: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2020, 12:04:22 am »
Quote from: PeteS in CA on September 04, 2020, 11:22:03 pm
As best I can tell, the use of "AI" was by The Verge. I don't change titles of articles unless the title is so long it gets truncated in the Subject line by Simple Machines' forum SW. That Edgenuity uses very basic/crude keyword search for grading should even have PSs that use Edgenuity's program POed. Computerized buzzword search is so 1999!

Pete, no slam on  you... just irritated that the media keeps putting out trash information...   :beer:
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Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: These students figured out their tests were graded by AI — and the easy way to cheat
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2020, 08:27:59 am »
Quote from: EdinVA on September 04, 2020, 05:22:46 pm
This is not AI... This is just looking for keywords.

AI included deductive reasoning and ability to learn...
"Journalists" are so stupid...
Sounds like someone picked a module out of Echelon or Carnivore and adapted it to "educational software". Look for keywords and score appropriately.

Which begs the question:

Would absolutely correct answers that did not use the buzzwords be graded down for the absence of the 'right' buzzwords?

How many who actually demonstrate a superior understanding of the topic by putting their answers in their own words rather than parroting the lesson have been given a bad grade they did not deserve?
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How God must weep at humans' folly! Stand fast! God knows what he is doing!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

C S Lewis
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