I don’t want random techbros coming in, hence why I’m posting on Den. I hope this is ok.
I’m teaching an online composition class this summer. I got two essays from students that cited sources that don’t exist. I called them out on it. Here’s what happened.
One copped to using Bard, but then sent a second essay that still clearly reeks of gen AI or other horseshit.
The other copped to using a GenAI search engine unwittingly, and has tried to claim they’ve read things that, by all accounts, they haven’t.
Normally, I would have just failed these students for writing hundreds of words on material that doesn’t exist. But I really wanted them to go beyond a basic cop and explain their reasons for using this. This is in part since I have administrative duties around GenAI this year in our program. So I wanted to get data for my fellow instructors (i.e. here’s what the student did, here’s how we can design better assignments that both teach more carefully and also are harder to use GenAI on, etc. etc.) Instead, I’ve just hit a brick wall from them. They’re insisting that it was only a research error, even though by all accounts, these essays shouldn’t exist since the majority is written on things that just literally aren’t out there.
Again, they wrote about things that don’t exist as if they do. That’s GenAI in a nutshell. It’s some of the most blatant shit. And these students are still trying to justify their work.
What bugs me most, however, isn’t the students. It’s the fact that technology like this was thrown out into the ether without any fucking guard rails. These students don’t realize the problems with it, so they’re fucking themselves. And while maybe they would have found some other way to do this kind of lazy work pre-ChatGPT, the accessibility of these LLM models means that more students will do stupid shit like this and fail, instead of trying to learn.
I’m very doomer about this stuff, not because of some AI takeover, but the total enshittification of everything. The 
episode on it was very good on the other serious labor implications as well. However, there’s also a ton of potential added labor or shittiness in the affected fields. After all, my instructors will have to work more for the same amount of pay OR just not bother policing it. Either outcome is terrible. While I’m going to do my damndest to try and help my colleagues build assignments that remain rigorous and have guiderails to avoid genAI production, the fact is, eventually it’s coming for all of us. And even if it doesn’t take our jobs, it’s going to make us all more miserable. Because there’s not the structures in place for FALGSC or anything. So we’re going to lay people off, pay them less, remove some of the most human pursuits, and for what? A bot that’s slightly more convenient and less accurate than wikipedia?
I’d love for someone to un-doomer me about this stuff, but it’s just very depressing. I needed to vent among friends. Thanks for listening folks.
I’m still a 
at heart, but god damn is it hard to keep up in the face of material conditions.
I’m trying to understand the mindset of doing this. I imagine they were hotshit or at least pretty smart in high-school and coasted a lot, never really had to apply themselves or struggle through school. And during covid online school I’m sure they slacked off and built some bad habits.
And then they encounter this problem at school, it’s harder than they’re used to, they can’t just slack off and bullshit an essay and get a B or A off that. They could fail. And instead of asking for guidance from the prof they’re indirectly paying, or asking for more time, they go straight to academic dishonesty and present someone/something else’s work as their own (and in your case - they continue to lie about it lol). I just don’t understand why go to cheating so quickly??? You’re in school, you’re paying, you have access to your instructor and presumably a writing center, you have your fellow students… like why turn in obvious chatgpt essays. Is it just anxiety or fear? Or do they think they’re entitled to get away with it? I don’t understand.
I REMINDED THEM ALL EVERY WEEK I HAD OFFICE HOURS WEEKLY BY ZOOM APPOINTMENT AT ANY TIME AND ONLY TWO STUDENTS EVER USED IT.
And yes, I wonder a lot about anxiety. However, I’d like to think I’m fairly approachable and try to make it clear office hours is there for them. It’s really baffling.
If they’re like me in university they probably left it last minute and started writing it too late to use any office hours to try to improve their writing.
This sort of thing might be able to be mitigated by having mini pre-deadlines where you have to submit what you wrote but it doesn’t count for many marks. Or if you have seminars/tutorials as part of the class you could have them have to discuss about their sources they scoped out but didn’t write about yet.
It is a little bit hand-holdy for university, but if these are covid final highschool year kids then they all have habits even worse than mine.
It’s kind-of like doing an enforced writing-workshop since you at least get a rough draft a lot quicker and they have something to bring to any workshop.
I had those draft checkpoints. After my feedback, instead of coming to office hours, they responded by spooling up the AI material.
It’s really depressing, because I even said in my feedback “you should come to office hours.” Like, come talk to me about these half-baked ideas. Instead, they went to the AI to churn out crap.
I should note, this is a summer online class. So I suspect that contributed a lot as well - they didn’t “feel” like they were in class, so the material they submitted was often late and not up to scruff.
Was their original material you provided feedback on written by themselves?
If so, that’s pretty strange to me. Maybe it indicates they skated by in highschool effortlessly and have no idea how to write better, and instead of trying to write better when given critique they gave up and used AI?
I feel for you, I have no idea how to make these people want to learn and put effort in either. My major didn’t require writing essays and such, but I did have to take some gen-ed classes but I found them pretty interesting.
I did my essays within the span of 2 days though, and if I cared more about grades and it was available maybe I would’ve used AI, idk. I had good English marks in highschool, but my university essays were usually C- to B- because I didn’t do writing workshops, and I sort of regret not putting in more effort but I was struggling with my main STEM degree focus at the time.
Online definitely makes it harder to engage people.
Perhaps a mix. The drafts have too little to tell. So my working theory is they just ended up behind the 8 ball and made some questionable choices.
They aren’t there to learn. I know a lot of college and HS age kids and not very many of them really get into a learning mindset, they are there out of obligation, or to get something else they want, or because their parents insisted.
Also, depending on what year they are in, they probably built these habits in HS tbh, especially if they had teachers who didn’t read their work in detail or never had to diverge from “analyze this well known novel”, which I imagine the AI is more convincing at considering the wealth of source material. I’ve met some of these kids, its just the next step from “haha I never read any assigned books just the cliffsnotes if anything and I still pass” mindset.
Personally, I started to get into that “learning mindset” with certain classes in college and an extracurricular or two in HS, but in college I was already committed to a major that I already knew a lot about and increasingly didnt even grab my interest, so I dropped out rather than force myself to go through the motions for several more years of part time school that I mostly hated. I might go back for something like philosophy or sociology eventually, but the desire to actually learn not just pass has to be there.
Exactly, the goal of college is to obtain a job permission slip as quickly, cheaply, and easily as possible.
which is a shame, to be fair, but it isnt the kids’ fault that it’s being shaped to be more and more that way, I have a hard time really blaming them. But for all our sake’s I hope it can be turned around. a real education can be a profoundly liberating thing.
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