HOW CAN SCHOOLS PREVENT AI-ASSISTED CHEATING?
The main concern surrounding the usage of AI tools in education is the risk of students submitting work generated by these bots.
Universities in Singapore use software like Turnitin to detect cheating in students’ work.
Apart from identifying plagiarism using content on the Internet and its library of about 2 billion student papers, Turnitin also uses “fingerprint” technology to distinguish a person’s writing style.
This can help to identify students’ work that has been written by ghostwriters, and in an upcoming upgrade, detect essays generated by chatbots.
“We collect a writing sample on the first day of class to understand how students write – their fingerprints. Then we compare future submissions to that original writing style,” said Turnitin CEO Chris Caren.
The firm’s software is able to identify AI-generated content with up to 97 per cent accuracy, said Mr Caren, adding that the technology is able to spot even parts of an essay not entirely written by human hand.
“It’s all algorithms,” he said. “The word frequency is very predictable. You can see a very clear distribution of different words in writing, which is not how humans write.”
SMU said it treats the unauthorised use of AI to write papers the same way the university treats the use of a third-party service – they are both forms of contract-cheating.
In a situation when a student paper is suspected to have been written by AI, universities said they will conduct investigations. Penalties for academic cheating may include grade penalty, course failure, and in severe cases – suspension or expulsion.
Both NTU and SMU said there has not been any known cases related to cheating using AI tools so far.
SHOULD AI BE EMBRACED IN EDUCATION?
Despite developing tools to identify misuse of AI in education, Mr Caren said his firm is a huge advocate of incorporating these advanced technologies into learning.
“AI is a very good tool to research and learn. It can summarise difficult concepts and explain them in ways you can understand. AI is not just about generating assignments but also a way to learn and get feedback on your work,” he said.
One way educators can deter students from using chatbots for their work, he said, is to use topics that have less content on the Internet, such as local, personal, or very recent events.
