A graduate who successfully cheated a lecturer by using a strong artificial intelligence ‘bot’ to create a university essay.
Pieter Snepvangers wrote an article using the controversial AI ChatGPT as part of an experiment to explore whether the program may be utilized by cheaters for their assignments.
He instructed the AI to write a complicated 2,000-word paper on social policy, which it completed in 20 minutes.
Pieter then contacted a professor from a prominent Russel Group institution to mark it and provide feedback, and was astounded when the instructor indicated it would have received a score of 53 – a passing 2:2 grade.
The essay was labeled ‘fishy,’ but the professor claimed it was more like to the work of a ‘waffling, lazy’ student than an AI, admitting: ‘You absolutely couldn’t cheat your way to a first-class degree, but you can cheat your way to a 2:2.’
Pieter was astounded to learn that a university instructor admitted students may ‘cheat their way’ to a passing mark.
ChatGPT has piqued the interest of schools and colleges all across the globe since its introduction three months ago.
Users may ask any question and get an AI-generated response in seconds that replicates the style and grammar of a human response.
Students in the United States have been barred from using the program at school, while UK colleges are’scrambling’ to figure out how to identify its usage.
Creating content for a student news website ‘I selected a reasonably prominent Russell Group institution and asked one of its teachers if I could take his final year social policy exam to test whether ChatGPT might truly function,’ Pieter said.
‘I was curious as to what grade I could receive and whether or not he’d notice the essay was produced by a computer.
‘I went to work on the idea of being a third-year social policy student preparing a 2,000-word essay worth 75% of a unit regarding climate change.’
Pieter began by simply inputting the essay question into the program and requesting 2,000 words with references.
However, the technology, developed by Elon Musk’s OpenAI, only returned 365 words at start, accounting for barely 15% of the desired total.
The graduate used a different method, asking the bot ten unique queries all about the essay subject, and finally obtained 3,500 words from the AI.
He then went about copying the finest paragraphs from the program in an order that matched the structure of an essay.
He didn’t edit or rewrite any of the words, and he finished his essay in 20 minutes.
‘All in all, 20 minutes to compose an essay that is intended to reflect 12 weeks of study,’ he remarked.
‘It’s not awful. I hesitantly submitted it to my instructor and awaited the outcome.’
Pieter was surprised to learn that, although not receiving a perfect grade, the program had received a passing 2:2.
When questioned whether it was evident that the essay had been written by a robot, the instructor claimed it was ‘fishy’.
‘Basically, this essay isn’t cited,’ he added. It is quite broad. It doesn’t go into any specifics. It isn’t very theoretical or intellectually sophisticated.
‘This might be a student who has attended courses and participated in discussions on the unit’s theme. The essay’s substance, this might be someone from one of my courses. In terms of substance, it wasn’t the worst.’
The one area where ChatGPT entirely failed was in-text reference; nevertheless, the instructor said that if a student ‘had slipped anything in which sounded reasonable,’ the essay would get a grade of 53.
They also said that if Pieter had merely added references from the module’s reading list, he’might have even achieved the upper 50s’.
The instructor also stated that a startling 12% of the essays he had graded so far showed symptoms of being authored using AI software.
‘The fact is that the program doesn’t give you the solution all at once,’ Pieter said. You’ll need to organise its replies in a more logical manner.
‘
But it wouldn’t have taken much longer to add a few references from the reading list and boost it to a high 2:2 if I hadn’t spent 10 minutes doing this and received a 53.
‘ChatGPT has just been around for three months. You wouldn’t bet against him writing an essay worthy of a 2:1 in three months.’
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