I teach a tech class to marketing students, and it definitely works very well. They are allowed to use ChatGPT and other tools, with one caveat: you remain responsible for the output. I hide white-text prompt injections in specs or longer task instructions (usually in PDFs, works well enough there with copy and paste), and sometimes place a phrase near the end of the text that prompts the LLM to append something like, "I submit this assignment without checking its output, and I accept point deductions as agreed."
I used to do this for a laugh and not deduct points, next year, I showed them this before class as an introduction to working with AI and kind of as a warning, I'll deduct points, expecting nobody falling for it, then they fell for it over and over again. Well.
Good. I wouldn't like cheaters to compete with honest students on the job market.
In my kid's school (American high school equivalent) being caught on using LLM in papers is a failed subject. Students must pass all the subjects to finish the school. Some of these subjects won't be taught the next year so effectively they lose year, two, three....
It really depends on the field you go into. If you're a writer and you want a job writing things, you go to college to become a better writer and prepare yourself for working in that industry. If the professors just let you turn in AI slop, how does that benefit anyone? You didn't write anything, why are you here paying tuition? And it demonstrates to the industry that if colleges are handing out degrees to writers for AI slop, why do they even need writers? Just cut the middleman out and they can make the slop themselves.
You go to school to learn. Turning in AI slop doesn't teach you anything. You didn't have to research the subject and commit time to crafting the work into something good. You just typed in a prompt (or copy and pasted it) and then turned in whatever the computer made. The point of learning isn't to turn in assignments, it's to learn and demonstrate your knowledge via assignments. If you want to get a job producing AI slop, don't bother going to school.
Writing specifically, I'll concede may need some oversight to prevent LLM use.
In general though, we should be looking at how to re-design assignments to demonstrate an understanding without being a large block of text, atleast imo.
We (Or atleast, my school) started teaching us how to use a calculator in things like Trig and Calc. It's not about 'can you divide correctly to arrive at the correct value of sin' but 'can you differentiate when to use sin vs cos', which I think was the more valuable lesson. But maybe LLMs are so powerful, or so 'do it all', that we just cannot compare it to the calculator (Not in their current iteration, but looking ahead...)
Why wouldn't students be able to learn how to use LLMs afterwards? How does learning to use them via the completely unstructured process of getting output past an overworked teacher out of their depth develop critical skills?
> How does learning to use them via the completely unstructured process of getting output past an overworked teacher out of their depth develop critical skills?
Nobody said it did. The point isn't to get it past a teacher. The point is to develop a curriculum that encourages growth with technology as opposed to demonizing it
Expecting a kid to run a mile in Physical Education class rather than call Uber is not denying technical progress, nor is it hurting their ability to call Uber later when it is appropriate.
Prompt injecting homework assignments is a funny idea, but doesn't seem very productive.
Either the teacher needs to adjust how they are teaching new concepts or the student needs to ask themself why they are attending college in the first place.
It's pointless. Just an arms race of gimmicks. There's really no option besides making homework all optional, and putting 100% of the grade into in-person exams. I basically don't trust that any new graduate has earned their degree, and won't until schools do what's necessary to crush cheaters.
I agree with you in spirit, but the last meta pre-LLM was that exams were bad at measuring student skill and that students felt more fairly treated when their grade was the result of multiple assignments and projects. I think it's a shame we have move away from that
They are. I have a friend who was significantly more smart and thorough in our studies but often get bad scores on exams not being able to concentrate under the pressure.
Exams also rarely measured skill in the course. Often just a subset. We would often spend the last month of each semester cramming exams instead of studying the curse material because it wasn't that useful.
I rarely felt I got a lot out of courses, but I often felt I would if I got to study it properly
Well, that is a way to test students’ ability to perform under pressure, but I’m adamant it’s not a fair assessment of their skill in the subject at hand, nor how much they’d worked and improved during the course. On several occasions I have gotten higher marks than my friend because of their anxiety issues, despite me being a worse student and arguably a worse researcher (what we studied for).
I also struggled with exams, but that's because my understanding was often shallow, due to a lack of effort to study and understand the material. I'm very suspicious of people that say they're smart, but can't perform on exams. That said, there's plenty of ways to structure things to avoid this. Have weekly, easy, pass / fail exams that ensure you've read the material at a basic level, or understood some basic concepts. Lab work. Presentations with live grilling from the professor to ensure you understand the topic.
I don’t think my friend would claim to be smart (and not I’m not talking about myself in third person to sound more convincingly, I have a real las in mind). I say they are. I saw them in a day to day work and they are both more knowledgeable and more productive than I am. It’s being put on the spot, with high stakes and limited time, they had a difficulty with.
> there's plenty of ways to structure things to avoid this
Sure, I was arguing specifically against GGP’s solution, i.e. betting everything on the finals.
Huh? Not every job requires this trait, and even though some do, it’s not something nonlinear optics professor ought to evaluate.
Sure, it’s a nice quality to have and I find it useful at times: when it’s “suddenly” the last day to write a proposal, or when someone has to present at a conference. (However, these tasks many other skills besides just the ability to stay calm.) But I can’t agree that it is indispensable for a researcher.
I am in my final year of my bachelors in Software Engineering. I was (mostly still am) very interested in both SWE and CS in various angles - I studied a decent bit of PL theory, I tried to get into systems programming, I've built a bunch of "portfolio crud" software and had a short internship in a real company, with all of the above being roughly equally interesting to me. All this is to say I genuinely love the field so far.
However, the only benefit I've got from my local university is that it saves me from military while I study. Past year 2 (out of 4, country-specific quirks) there was roughly one subject actually worth paying attention to, so I also have switched to a "just get a decent grade at any cost" mode, as most of the material we're studying (and especially most of the assignments we've done) has negative value in real world.
Most of my peers consider me both more enthused and more knowledgeable than the average student, which mostly makes me realise that roughly 95% of my peers don't care about the contents of the courses.
All this is to say that, while grading is hard, the only thing that might get people to actually care is a proper course, no matter what threats you make.
I teach a tech class to marketing students, and it definitely works very well. They are allowed to use ChatGPT and other tools, with one caveat: you remain responsible for the output. I hide white-text prompt injections in specs or longer task instructions (usually in PDFs, works well enough there with copy and paste), and sometimes place a phrase near the end of the text that prompts the LLM to append something like, "I submit this assignment without checking its output, and I accept point deductions as agreed."
I used to do this for a laugh and not deduct points, next year, I showed them this before class as an introduction to working with AI and kind of as a warning, I'll deduct points, expecting nobody falling for it, then they fell for it over and over again. Well.
Good. I wouldn't like cheaters to compete with honest students on the job market.
In my kid's school (American high school equivalent) being caught on using LLM in papers is a failed subject. Students must pass all the subjects to finish the school. Some of these subjects won't be taught the next year so effectively they lose year, two, three....
This is the same argument as when teachers disallowed calculators in class, as 'You won't always have one in your pocket"
Failure to embrace in new technologies will not give you a 'step up on the competition', but will actively hamper your ability to compete at all.
That firm you're applying to doesn't care about your college book report.
It really depends on the field you go into. If you're a writer and you want a job writing things, you go to college to become a better writer and prepare yourself for working in that industry. If the professors just let you turn in AI slop, how does that benefit anyone? You didn't write anything, why are you here paying tuition? And it demonstrates to the industry that if colleges are handing out degrees to writers for AI slop, why do they even need writers? Just cut the middleman out and they can make the slop themselves.
You go to school to learn. Turning in AI slop doesn't teach you anything. You didn't have to research the subject and commit time to crafting the work into something good. You just typed in a prompt (or copy and pasted it) and then turned in whatever the computer made. The point of learning isn't to turn in assignments, it's to learn and demonstrate your knowledge via assignments. If you want to get a job producing AI slop, don't bother going to school.
Writing specifically, I'll concede may need some oversight to prevent LLM use.
In general though, we should be looking at how to re-design assignments to demonstrate an understanding without being a large block of text, atleast imo.
We (Or atleast, my school) started teaching us how to use a calculator in things like Trig and Calc. It's not about 'can you divide correctly to arrive at the correct value of sin' but 'can you differentiate when to use sin vs cos', which I think was the more valuable lesson. But maybe LLMs are so powerful, or so 'do it all', that we just cannot compare it to the calculator (Not in their current iteration, but looking ahead...)
Why wouldn't students be able to learn how to use LLMs afterwards? How does learning to use them via the completely unstructured process of getting output past an overworked teacher out of their depth develop critical skills?
> How does learning to use them via the completely unstructured process of getting output past an overworked teacher out of their depth develop critical skills?
Nobody said it did. The point isn't to get it past a teacher. The point is to develop a curriculum that encourages growth with technology as opposed to demonizing it
Expecting a kid to run a mile in Physical Education class rather than call Uber is not denying technical progress, nor is it hurting their ability to call Uber later when it is appropriate.
i wonder why the labs don't put a small model for detecting prompt injection in front of the main llm.
it's 20b at most and it can work quite well.
for now you can proxy http through llama guard. 'luxury' security if you can build and pay.
is there an architectural limitation?
Prompt injecting homework assignments is a funny idea, but doesn't seem very productive.
Either the teacher needs to adjust how they are teaching new concepts or the student needs to ask themself why they are attending college in the first place.
The student is attending college to get a job. Most students don't care about the course.
Probably around 50% of students in my year were only in it for the well paying jobs a prestigious degree like that could give them.
This has to be part of the threat model for cheating.
It's pointless. Just an arms race of gimmicks. There's really no option besides making homework all optional, and putting 100% of the grade into in-person exams. I basically don't trust that any new graduate has earned their degree, and won't until schools do what's necessary to crush cheaters.
I agree with you in spirit, but the last meta pre-LLM was that exams were bad at measuring student skill and that students felt more fairly treated when their grade was the result of multiple assignments and projects. I think it's a shame we have move away from that
> exams were bad at measuring student skill
They are. I have a friend who was significantly more smart and thorough in our studies but often get bad scores on exams not being able to concentrate under the pressure.
Exams also rarely measured skill in the course. Often just a subset. We would often spend the last month of each semester cramming exams instead of studying the curse material because it wasn't that useful.
I rarely felt I got a lot out of courses, but I often felt I would if I got to study it properly
Isn’t that actually a valid way to test? IMHO Performing under pressure is a capability signal in itself.
Well, that is a way to test students’ ability to perform under pressure, but I’m adamant it’s not a fair assessment of their skill in the subject at hand, nor how much they’d worked and improved during the course. On several occasions I have gotten higher marks than my friend because of their anxiety issues, despite me being a worse student and arguably a worse researcher (what we studied for).
I also struggled with exams, but that's because my understanding was often shallow, due to a lack of effort to study and understand the material. I'm very suspicious of people that say they're smart, but can't perform on exams. That said, there's plenty of ways to structure things to avoid this. Have weekly, easy, pass / fail exams that ensure you've read the material at a basic level, or understood some basic concepts. Lab work. Presentations with live grilling from the professor to ensure you understand the topic.
I don’t think my friend would claim to be smart (and not I’m not talking about myself in third person to sound more convincingly, I have a real las in mind). I say they are. I saw them in a day to day work and they are both more knowledgeable and more productive than I am. It’s being put on the spot, with high stakes and limited time, they had a difficulty with.
> there's plenty of ways to structure things to avoid this
Sure, I was arguing specifically against GGP’s solution, i.e. betting everything on the finals.
If you can’t concentrate under pressure then you will not go very far in employment….
Huh? Not every job requires this trait, and even though some do, it’s not something nonlinear optics professor ought to evaluate.
Sure, it’s a nice quality to have and I find it useful at times: when it’s “suddenly” the last day to write a proposal, or when someone has to present at a conference. (However, these tasks many other skills besides just the ability to stay calm.) But I can’t agree that it is indispensable for a researcher.
That’s why you’re an employee and not/never be a CEO mate.
the course is now no longer cs/swe.
the course is now
"how to pass exams in cs/swe"
Better than "how to get a passing grade in cs/swe"
I am in my final year of my bachelors in Software Engineering. I was (mostly still am) very interested in both SWE and CS in various angles - I studied a decent bit of PL theory, I tried to get into systems programming, I've built a bunch of "portfolio crud" software and had a short internship in a real company, with all of the above being roughly equally interesting to me. All this is to say I genuinely love the field so far.
However, the only benefit I've got from my local university is that it saves me from military while I study. Past year 2 (out of 4, country-specific quirks) there was roughly one subject actually worth paying attention to, so I also have switched to a "just get a decent grade at any cost" mode, as most of the material we're studying (and especially most of the assignments we've done) has negative value in real world.
Most of my peers consider me both more enthused and more knowledgeable than the average student, which mostly makes me realise that roughly 95% of my peers don't care about the contents of the courses.
All this is to say that, while grading is hard, the only thing that might get people to actually care is a proper course, no matter what threats you make.