America's Teenagers Say AI Cheating Has Become a Regular Feature of Student Life (pewresearch.org) 46
Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America's teens use AI help with schoolwork:
One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots' help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under $75,000 annually say this. Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same."
"The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life."
One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
"The survey did not ask students whether they had used chatbots to write essays or generate other assignments..." notes the New York Times. "But nearly 60% of teenagers told Pew that students at their school used chatbots to cheat 'very often' or 'somewhat often.'" Agreeing with that are the Pew Researchers themselves. "Our survey shows that many teens think cheating with AI has become a regular feature of student life."
One worried teenager still told the researchers that AI "makes people lazy and takes away jobs." But another teenager told the researchers that "Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
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What about the top richest ? (Score:1)
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Those are 'bigger' tests and probably mostly out of scope in a story about teenagers dealing with high school assignments.
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Aren't there plenty of stories of rich fucks who pay people to go take exams in place of their kids too tired from their frat parties ? Too few got caught.
Yeah, but that's OK, because those people will never have to learn how to do their own work. Mom & Dad already have management positions all picked out for them. They show up a couple days a week and raise holy hell with their staff and it'll seem like they're really getting somewhere.
Or viewed from another perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of students, those who love to learn and slackers who hate school. Slackers have been cheating for years and slouching through school, putting in minimum effort. The only difference now is that have better cheating tools.
Those who love to learn will use the new tools to help them learn faster and better. By using AI, they are practicing the skills that will be useful in the future.
Education needs major reform that takes advantage of the new tools to better help those who want to learn. Sadly, the slackers will probably fall further behind
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open a i.
when paired with web u i.
will explain when asked a question.
its patience to explain is useful.
i think of it as like a pair of pliers.
but a shinny pair of pliers
Re: Or viewed from another perspective (Score:2)
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of students, those who love to learn and slackers who hate school.
This is exactly like saying there are two kinds of workers, those who love to work, and those who hate their job.
Fuck right off down the road with that bullshit. Don't even try to put school up on some weird pedestal like it's not exactly what it looks like. It's work. Like moving boxes is good for your muscles, hitting the books is good for your brain, but it's work. Acting like everyone is supposed to like it because it's good for them is fucking fantasy.
Most kids don't love showing up to play baseball or
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People who hate running generally don't run, they either find some other activity, or they don't. but almost noone is forced to get up and run. Lots of students are forced to go to school and don't actually do the work, they waste their own time and every
Yes, and yes (Score:3)
Everyone's going to have to know how to use AI or they'll be left behind.
You are going to have to understand what it is. As well as its shortcomings. In the realm of "generate and test" tools, it is very good at the former. Not so good at the latter. Humans will have to verify its candidate solutions for the forseeable future. Which means they will have to understand the subject matter involved.
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Though tossing high school assignment fodder at a prompt is hardly giving you useful AI experience.
For one, the usage is so brain dead simple, there's no learning curve really for that scenario.
For another, high school assignments are almost always super easy for LLMs. Very well trodden material that is easy to grade for a high school teacher without going all adventurous or posing questions that *might* not have well defined answers. The teachers already know the material, they know the outcome of every
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For another, high school assignments are almost always super easy for LLMs.
As they were in college for people in fraternities who had access to their homework/test files. And for much the same reasons.
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A couple of ideas...
Flip the classroom/homework model, as some had done with on-line tools like Kahn Academy. Kids learn with texts, computers, whatever outside of class. In class they do exercises in either a controlled computer environment or with no computer props at all.
Perform assessments with no computer support; write in a blue book, fill out multiple choice on a bubble sheet (for ease of grading), or do problems/show work on regular paper.
Say "f*ck it," throw up our hands, tell kids they can ei
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Children are subject to experiments in learning all the time. Some of them are actually managed as experiments, while others are sold as the "latest greatest educational solution" to school districts who then implement them with no testing what so ever.
Open classrooms come to mind (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/education/open-classrooms [ebsco.com] with school districts buying in and spending $millions to construct school buildings based on these principles, only to find out that they were not necessarily e
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I propose we don't experiment on the kids, but teach them the basic tools to operate in society for themselves: literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, and access to a library of classic works made before the AI revolution.
There is zero point in making little monkeys who know how to click buttons on tablets and believe whatever is in their social media feeds. There is zero point in catering to the whims of industry or the ever changing cutting edge of science.
The environment of people is the society they
Maybe it's time to come full circle (Score:2)
Homework is largely useless (Score:4, Insightful)
As for American teenagers I don't think any sort of functional economy is going to be left for them. We are already a 25% functional unemployment. That means a quarter of the population either is unemployed, has given up looking for work, or makes so little money that they cannot afford to feed and clothes and shelter themselves. Even with roommates.
So there isn't really a lot of point in demanding that they work harder because there's nothing for them to work for except a techno-feudal hellscape.
That's the world we left our kids. We really are a bunch of useless assholes.
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We are leaving behind a world of wonders, of AI and robots, things that were only dreamed of a century ago.
Is there a social disruption? Certainly. Whenever there is a massive shift in technology it is inevitable.
It happened with industrial revolution, but it gave prosperity to everyone eventually, even if there were social upheavals in the process.
The same will happen again. There will be a decade or two of chaos at least. The population needs to contract.
Better farming and medicine allowed for a very larg
Anyway I know exactly how this works (Score:1)
Because I have a transgender too kid I had in vitro too before I birthed them so I had to worry about whether or not my kid might get halfway through a grad school degree and tens of thousands in debt only to have the rug pulled up under them by a MAGA dipshit kid who scored a gentlemen c.
It's genuinely hilarious that I'm that important to anyone. I mean besides my kid because they are still using my Netflix account...
But the practical result is my kid is going to go at least a quarter million dollars in de
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You know this how? Did you generate this slop on AI?
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Luckily most of our youth have a lot more to aspire to besides your sad tired nihilism.
Carl Sagan saw this coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Carl Sagan, in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark", 1995
The students know the game (Score:3)
Ai this that (Score:3)
This is just one of the many things that people talk about now like it's unique about “a.i.” and that it's more scary that it's “a.i.”. Homework could always be liberally cheated with because there's no oversight. One can ask someone else, look up the answer online, copy the homework of a classmate. There is no controlled environment here where people can be supervised like in a classroom.
Truth be told I think the concept of “homework” existing was always just a cost-saving measure. If students apparently should spend more time on school than school hours, then schools should simply be open for longer and school hours should be longer, but that costs more money I suppose
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You need homework because there are not enough hours for kids to just put their heads down and read Cat's Cradle in English class, to work the 500 integrals or so it takes to be competent at basic calculus in math class, to drill the vocabulary it takes to learn a language in Spanish class. Classroom is for instruction and to get feedback on areas where you are struggling. Homework is to practice what you learned in class or to do individual quiet study that is pointless to do in class.
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And at the end of the day, whatever one does at home during homework is still more effectively done, and less prone to cheating when done in class with the oversight and aid of a teacher. The only advantage of doing it at home is that the government can pay less hours for the teacher.
Obviously money isn't finite, but let's not act like the entire concept of homework isn't just a cost saving measure either.
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And at the end of the day, whatever one does at home during homework is still more effectively done, and less prone to cheating when done in class with the oversight and aid of a teacher. The only advantage of doing it at home is that the government can pay less hours for the teacher.
Obviously money isn't finite, but let's not act like the entire concept of homework isn't just a cost saving measure either.
Time isn't infinite either, particularly class time.
A typical high school period is around 45 minutes. If an AP calculus teacher would typically assigned 30m of homework/night, are you saying it is a good use of teacher and student time to have the teacher spend 2/3 of the class just silently proctoring homework, leaving only 15m for instruction?
Let's say it takes a student 15 hours to read a novel. That's about a month's worth of English classes. Instead of assigning the reading as homework, should the
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A typical high school period is around 45 minutes. If an AP calculus teacher would typically assigned 30m of homework/night, are you saying it is a good use of teacher and student time to have the teacher spend 2/3 of the class just silently proctoring homework, leaving only 15m for instruction?
They can simply tweak class length to be the optimal length for whatever is needed. There is no particular requiremnet that it should be 45 minutes.
Let's say it takes a student 15 hours to read a novel. That's about a month's worth of English classes. Instead of assigning the reading as homework, should the teacher just twiddle his thumbs in class for a month while he watches his students read? No in-class discussions on themes, no education about the historical context of the novel or discussing the intent of the author. No grammar or vocabulary lessons, just silent reading for for a month.
No, at that point the students can ask the teacher about whatever part of the grammar they can't figure out rather than having to look it up at home in their native language on the internet; that's what a good English teacher is for.
"AI democratized the feeling of knowing [...] (Score:2)
[...] without the burden of understanding. Reality will provide feedback shortly." This phrase is on a sticker in my office. (Look it up, there's a cute sloth on the sticker too.)
I'm currently teaching proof-based math to college freshmen. In the honors track. My syllabus does not disallow the use of AI because I haven't been able to wrap my head around how to best do that yet. Students end up with homework scores with averages in the very high 90s. Standard deviations in the low single digits. This is, of
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Cheating has always been widespread (Score:3)
CheatGPT (The Simpsons) (Score:3)
Bart Gets Caught Using CheatGPT On His Homework [youtube.com]
Rich kids don't need chatbots (Score:1)
We've been here before (Score:4, Informative)
Math teachers (I teach high school calculus and computer science) have struggled with these issues for about ten years. Tools exist that allow you to photograph algebra problems and generate not only the correct answer, but all of the supporting work. When it comes time for the test, these students do not usually do well, unless they're smart enough to learn the material only through the in-class examples. However, I've found that by the time you get to Calculus II, that stops working even for the brightest of students. Most of the high-level students eventually figure this out. When I teach Calculus III (multivariable) at the high school level, I intentionally don't check homework at all (I'll provide assistance, obviously), so that students learn the consequences of not doing it, and develop intrinsic motivation to practice.
The use of generative AI is probably going to change college assessments. There will be more emphasis on timed, in-person performance assessments in all subjects, similar to what happens in technical interviews for engineers and computer scientists. The sad part of this is that there many individuals who do not perform well in high-pressure environments like that, and they will find it increasingly difficult to succeed in college courses. I remember taking upper-division math courses where we would be given a week to do a take-home final that was essentially a series of proofs. Those days may be coming to an end, and it's very unfortunate because that was a much more authentic, deeper mathematical practice than a timed test. I recall taking walks around campus, thinking about the problems, and often it would take a mile or two before a path to a proof would present itself.
This AI stuff is soooo awesome! (Score:2)
I love it how entire value-provision chains are turning nil and void with this new AI thing arriving. Imagine how worthless a PhD is when everybody has a 5000 IQ genius in his pocket, ready to answer any question immediately. LOL! Society is about to go sooo haywire, I totally want to keep my humor about it.
I can not express how glad I am that my only degree is a diploma in performing arts. It was always quite worthless money-wise and I knew it from the get-go, but definitely exempt from all the loss of val
Normal (Score:2)
"....Fewer teens living in higher-earning households (7%) say the same."
Of course not, in these households it's the butler doing the homework.
True colors (Score:2)
Works for me. (Score:2)
As my reasonably but not excessively affluent retirement continues, there will probably be lots of times that I would like to throw money at a problem by hiring cheap, unskilled labor. This sort of thing helps keep that labor pool cost-effective and plentiful. If they self-selected, so much the better.
Re: Works for me. (Score:2)
Re: Article (Score:2)
This is related to money? (Score:2)