Study: 94% Of AI-Generated College Writing Is Undetected By Teachers

It’s been two years since ChatGTP made its public debut, and in no sector has its impact been more dramatic and detrimental than in education.

Dec 02, 2024

Increasingly, homework and exam writing are being done by generative AI instead of students, turned in and passed off as authentic work for grades, credit, and degrees.

It is a serious problem that devalues the high school diploma and college degree. It is also sending an untold number of supposedly qualified people into careers and positions such as nurses, engineers, and firefighters, where their lack of actual learning could have dramatic and dangerous consequences.

But by and large, stopping AI academic fraud has not been a priority for most schools or educational institutions. Unbelievably, a few schools have actively made it easier and less risky to use AI to shortcut academic attainment, by allowing the use of AI but disallowing the reliable technology that can detect it.

Turning off those early warning systems is a profound miscalculation because, as new research from the U.K. points out once again, teachers absolutely cannot or do not spot academic work that has been spit out by a chatbot.

The paper, by Peter Scarfe and others at the University of Reading in the U.K., examined what would happen when researchers created fake student profiles and submitted the most basic AI-generated work for those fake students without teachers knowing. The research team found that, “Overall, AI submissions verged on being undetectable, with 94% not being detected. If we adopt a stricter criterion for “detection” with a need for the flag to mention AI specifically, 97% of AI submissions were undetected.”

More on AI writing and learning on Forbes

AI Is Transforming The World Of Work, Are We Ready For It? | FT: Working It

Generative AI is set to reshape the workplace. Business leaders in all sectors are eager to adopt AI tools to increase the productivity and efficiency of their workforces.

With the technology changing so rapidly and the many uncertainties it brings, are businesses truly ready for it?

Nobel Prize Wins Point To A Pivotal Moment Of The New AI Era

AI’s role in scientific research is evolving from a tool to a primary driver of discovery.

Last month, the scientific community experienced a groundbreaking moment with the announcement of the 2024 Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry. In an unprecedented outcome, both prizes were awarded for achievements involving artificial intelligence—signaling the beginning of an AI-driven era in scientific discovery. This historic event not only honors the visionary minds behind these innovations but also indicates a profound shift: AI is transitioning from being a mere tool to becoming the true driver of discovery itself.

Nobel Prize in Physics: Neural networks propel AI revolution

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “Godfather of Artificial Intelligence,” and John Hopfield. In the 1980s, these pioneers laid the foundation for artificial neural networks—mathematical systems inspired by the human brain. Hopfield designed a network capable of storing and reconstructing complex patterns, which Hinton subsequently advanced. Hinton’s application of the Boltzmann machine enabled feature detection and automated learning, forming the backbone of modern AI technologies, including systems like ChatGPT.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry: AI unlocks the protein folding mystery

The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker for their pioneering use of AI in protein research. In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper developed AlphaFold2, an AI model that solved a 50-year-old challenge: predicting protein structures. This model can now predict the structure of approximately 200 million proteins and is utilized by researchers in 190 countries for drug development, antibiotic resistance studies, and the creation of enzymes to break down plastic. Baker expanded on this by using AI to design entirely new proteins, paving the way for applications in drug development, vaccines, nanomaterials, and microscopic sensors.

AI: The new discoverer in scientific advancement

This year’s Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry represent a pivotal moment, elevating AI from a supporting role to a primary force in scientific progress. The breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and biology that led to these awards were made possible due to neural networks and advanced machine learning tools—not just through human ingenuity.

More about AI as a primary driver of discovery on Inc.

AMD CEO Lisa Su | AI A Huge Asset That Can Accelerate Our Business

In this segment of Global Dialogues, Shereen Bhan speaks with AMD CEO Lisa Su as the firm completes 2 decades in India and their plans going ahead.

Logictry | Sales, Distributor, and Partner Enablement

I have partnered with AI platform providers, Logictry to evangelize their solutions.

Check out the post I wrote about a case study Logictry did with National Instruments.

This is just one of the many use cases for the Logictry platform, stay tuned for more.

Check out the self-led demo after the presentation and then contact me for more info.

AWS Wants To Make Your Call Center Interactions Less Painful

Slowly but surely, Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit has become a major player in the call/contact center space with its Amazon Connect cloud-based (and AI-centric) contact center service, which launched back in 2017. Today, companies like Air Canada, Dish Network and U.S. Bank use the platform for their customer service needs. At its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, the company has now announced a number of updates to Connect which, unsurprisingly, focus on AI, powered by the Amazon Q platform.

“When we first came out, we were really a voice only solution that focused heavily on bringing AI to the contact center [with] scalability, security — the things that are our calling cards for AWS. And pretty quickly, we were able to add more features and get to a bigger feature completeness,” Pasquale DeMaio, vice president and general manager of Amazon Connect at AWS, told me. “Now, we offer channels across everything from, chat, email — coming out as we speak — and also SMS, WhatsApp, Apple Messaging for Business.”

DeMaio stressed that AWS built Connect as an end-to-end solution that is now in use by over 14,000 external customers, as well as Amazon.com itself. Given the contact center context, most of the new features focus on how Connect customers can more easily build AI-powered self-service workflows that can handle many of the more routine customer service tasks. Originally, AWS used Q in Connect mostly to help guide agents through their customer interactions. Now, businesses can use the service to build customer-facing self-service experiences as well.

More on AWS reducing call center stress on TechCrunch

How AI Is Changing The Way We Shop

With the holiday shopping season underway, many retailers are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into their systems, using the emerging tech to track consumer behavior, prevent theft, improve supply chain management, and more.

HSBC head of retail and apparel, US commercial banking, Eric Fisch, joins Julie Hyman and Madison Mills on Market Domination Overtime to discuss how retailers are using AI. "There are definitely some real practical applications, some defensive," Fisch says, explaining, "There's been a lot of talk around theft" with AI monitoring cameras for suspicious activity.

Another use is "AI that's tracking and heat mapping the way people flow through a store where you actually glance where you're reaching out for product [to help] retailers better position product." Customer service is another application for AI in the retail space with AI chatbots resolving customer service issues.

AI Licensing Deals Can Protect Good Journalism, Says Reuters Chief

Steve Hasker says the technology presents dangers but can remove the ‘grunt work’ of producing high-quality content

Publishers “are right to be wary” about the companies developing AI, Steve Hasker, chief executive of Thomson Reuters, has warned. The experience with tech businesses over the past 25 years had been “devastating for the news industry” and there was a need to be “vigilant” about the protection of copyright, he said.

As boss of the enormous content company, Hasker has overseen a number of licensing deals with AI businesses in order to sell its information to power their large language models. These have included a tie-up with Meta Platforms. It uses models from OpenAI to underpin its legal AI assistant called CoCounsel.

“Reuters has a historical news file as a reference data set for these models. Our news is free of bias. It is independent. It’s fact based. It is triple checked and verified. We don’t offer opinions. We’re not leaning left or leaning right or spinning a narrative for the entertainment of our listeners, viewers or readers. It really is the underlying facts associated with the news. So it’s a particularly powerful source for these models to be trained on or built on,” Hasker said.

Many content businesses were taken by surprise by the advent of large language models and the realization that their intellectual property may have been used to train them, without their knowledge or consent. Hasker said: “Licensing deals clear the air in terms of the legalities of that use. I think there’s definitely an element of that”.

More on AI licensing deals protecting journalism in The Times

Zapier Co-Founder Mike Knoop On AI Agents And The Path To AGI

Mike co-founded Zapier and started the ARC Prize to accelerate progress towards open AGI. We had a great chat about how Zapier works, how PMs and marketers can use AI to automate even more work, and why LLMs won’t reach AGI by themselves.

Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. AI is moving fast, subscribe today to stay informed.