It seems that AI is everywhere these days. AI chatbots like ChatGpt make it easier to write emails and organize your meal plans. Students are invading schools as they use AI to write assignments and skip troubling aspects of learning along the way. AI can provide essays in just a few minutes.
As a professor of strategic communication, I regularly find students using AI tools such as ChatGpt, Grammarly, and Essaygenius. It is usually easy to see that students have used one of these tools to draft the entire work. One Telltail Sign is an ambiguous language. AI also likes to spit out text at widely posted assignment prompts.
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How to tell if something was written by AI
Some of the most common ways to determine if something is written using AI is:
- Important terms from the assignment prompt are used repeatedly.
- It contains inaccurate facts thanks to the hallucinations of AI chatbots.
- The text doesn't sound natural.
- The explanations are general and repetitive, rather than actually leading everywhere.
- The tone doesn't sound like a normal writing style.
For example, students may use CHATGPT. This will provide query results in an AI chatbot that uses large-scale language model learning and conversation questions and answer formats, simply copy and paste the essay questions into the tool and write a short essay response to the prompt.
Get this prompt: within 300 words, we will explain how this SWAT and brand audit will inform the final pitch.
This is the result of ChatGpt.
I received an answer like this, or a very close one to it. Several times during my tenure as a teacher, and one of the most recognizable red flags, is the number of instances in which the key term from the prompt is used in the final product.
Students usually do not repeat important terms from the prompt in their work this way, and the results read something closer to old school SEO-driven copies aimed at defining these terms, rather than unique essays to demonstrate understanding of the subject.
But can teachers use AI tools to catch students? I have devised several ways to become smarter to find artificial intelligence in my papers.
How to catch AI con artists
Here's how to use AI tools to catch scammers in your class:
Understand AI features
There are AI tools in the market that can scan challenges and their grading criteria and be written and quoted in a moment and provide complete work. These tools include Gptzero and Smodin. Getting used to such tools is the first step in the war against AI-driven integrity violations.
Please make sure the scammers do it
Before the semester begins, copy and paste all your assignments into tools like ChatGpt and ask them to do the work for you. If you have examples of results that are specifically provided according to the assignment, you will be properly equipped to catch AI writing answers. You can also use tools specifically designed to find AI writing in your papers.
Get real sample of the writing
At the beginning of the semester, students should submit simple, fun and personal writing. The prompt should be something like “200 words about what your favorite toy was when you were a child” or “Talking about the most fun thing you've ever had.” Once you have a sample of your student's actual writing style, you can use an AI tool review that uses later to sample samples for what you think is an AI writing task.
Please ask for a rewrite
If you suspect that you are using AI to trick an assignment, do the work you submitted, and request an AI tool to rewrite the work. In most cases I have come across, instead of modifying key elements of the “original” work, AI tools rewrite their own work in the most lazy way that could replace synonyms.
Here is an example:
Now, let's take something written by an actual person (me), my CNET bio:
The phrasing has been changed, extracting much of the soul from the writing, replacing it with arguably clearer and simpler sentences. There are more additions to the writing, perhaps to make it even more clear.
Do you always know if AI wrote anything?
The most important part about catching scammers to do their job using AI is that it will have a reasonable amount of evidence to show students and administrators at your school. It is essential to maintain skeptical feelings when grading, and the ability to demonstrate ease of use and understanding with these tools will make your point much stronger.
Good luck with your new AI frontier and fellow teachers. Don't offend students when they get caught up in a job written by robot collaborators. It is up to us to have a more engaging outlook for learning than the temptation to cheate.
