Texas A&M Prof Flunks All His Students After ChatGPT Falsely Claims It Wrote Their Papers

[Nevilledog]

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/texas-am-chatgpt-ai-professor-flunks-students-false-claims-1234736601/

No paywall
https://archive.is/FSarB


A NUMBER OF seniors at Texas A&M University–Commerce who already walked the stage at graduation this year have been temporarily denied their diplomas after a professor ineptly used AI software to assess their final assignments, the partner of a student in his class — known as DearKick on Reddit — claims to Rolling Stone.

Dr. Jared Mumm, a campus rodeo instructor who also teaches agricultural classes, sent an email on Monday to a group of students informing them that he had submitted grades for their last three essay assignments of the semester. Everyone would be receiving an “X” in the course, Mumm explained, because he had used “Chat GTP” (the OpenAI chatbot is actually called “ChatGPT”) to test whether they’d used the software to write the papers — and the bot claimed to have authored every single one.

“I copy and paste your responses in [ChatGPT] and [it] will tell me if the program generated the content,” he wrote, saying he had tested each paper twice. He offered the class a makeup assignment to avoid the failing grade — which could otherwise, in theory, threaten their graduation status.

There’s just one problem: ChatGPT doesn’t work that way. The bot isn’t made to detect material composed by AI — or even material produced by itself — and is known to sometimes emit damaging misinformation. With very little prodding, ChatGPT will even claim to have written passages from famous novels such as Crime and Punishment. Educators can choose among a wide variety of effective AI and plagiarism detection tools to assess whether students have completed assignments themselves, including Winston AI and Content at Scale; ChatGPT is not among them. And OpenAI’s own tool for determining whether a text was written by a bot has been judged “not very accurate” by a digital marketing agency that recommends tech resources to businesses.

*snip*

[RockRaven]

1. "Dr. Jared Mumm, a campus rodeo instructor who also teaches agricultural classes..."

Fucking Texas, man, beyond parody...

With this substrate, what results do you expect?

[Renew Deal]

5. The writer is being cruel

They could have written that the other way but it was funnier this way.

[Hekate]

18. Lovely. I admit I laughed

[DFW]

2. It sounds like the rodeo instructor landed on head a few too many times

He needs to be given a 50 year leave of absence. I hope the students sue both him and the school.

[LudwigPastorius]

3. Too bad old Rick Perry couldn't...

use that excuse to explain why he failed Animal Husbandry.

[Effete Snob]

4. A rodeo is missing a clown

[Trenzalore]

6. Texas A&M is a big institution

You'd think the administrators there would have standard software that all the professors are instructed to use to detect such things.

[highplainsdem]

11. See reply 10. None of the detectors work well.

[Paladin]

7. Fucking Aggies. (nt)

[Dr. Strange]

12. You know how to get an Aggie off of your porch?

You pay them for the pizza.

[obamanut2012]

13. hahahhaahah stealing

[tanyev]

8. "campus rodeo instructor"??

And the person from A&M couldn't believe it when I told her I wasn't interested in going there. I did pick them as one of the colleges to get my SAT scores because it was the right distance from home--close but not too close, if you know what I mean. Apparently my scores were good enough that they were interested. "Don't you want to discuss this with your parents?" she asked. "No, that won't be necessary," I said. Never regretted it.

[melm00se]

9. ChatGPT may not detect plagiarism

There are other tools that do.

In grad school I had to submit all of my papers to one of those tools and it kicked back an "original work score".

Anything below a certain threshold, you had to produce all of you citations both primary and secondary sources for review.

I had to do that once and fortunately I keep meticulous records of my research so it was not a big deal but I can't say that about a couple folks from my cohort.

[highplainsdem]

10. None of the AI detector tools work well. They all return a lot of false positives as

well as missing completely AI-generated text. They're being used anyway because teachers and schools are desperate.

Those tools are causing problems for writers, too, as they're sometimes wrongly accused of using AI, with people who paid for the writing demanding refunds or rewrites.

I've read that those detectors will also give different results if queried about the same text in different sessions.

[anarch]

14. "rodeo instructor"? WTAF?

also what kind of essay would be involved for...uhh...college rodeo aspirants? "Why Riding a Bucking Horse is Important to Modern Society" or something? "The Historical Origins of Team Roping"?

[melm00se]

16. Mock not, lest ye be mocked

Dr. Mumm holds a PhD in Animal Behavior and Welfare from KSU.

[anarch]

17. honestly, if anyone deserves to be mocked, it's me

I'm thinking (and hoping, really) that the essays were for some other class, not for the rodeo team. But still, the possibilities intrigue me..."What it Means to Me to be a Rodeo Clown"; "What I've Learned from Barrel Racing", etc.

[dalton99a]

15. Well, he didn't use AI for these papers