I've heard from people on the front lines of this battle that AI cheating is definitely happening in high schools and that there are some dead giveaways teachers can use to verify something was AI written as opposed to produced by a human. One of those giveaways is to look at the editing of the document in Google Docs, which can show teachers whether the document was typed in a little at a time and revised or was simply dropped in complete using cut and paste.
But while an examination like that would have worked a year ago, there was always a workaround. Smart students could simply print out there AI generated paper and then type it into Google Docs one word at a time. This was time consuming but still a lot easier than actually having to write a paper from scratch.
But even that process has a shortcut now. There are now tools online, called autotypers, which will type your paper into Google Docs for you.
These kinds of tutorials are now pervasive on TikTok and YouTube. They show students how to use tools known as humanizers and autotypers, which make it easier than ever to cheat. The videos — sometimes labeled ads, sometimes not — target college and high school students.
Humanizers rewrite A.I.-produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite.
Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions.
Both tools can help students evade software designed to detect A.I.
There's a cat and mouse problem here and some companies are working both sides of it. Grammarly, for one, has AI detection tools which aim to prevent cheating but also includes tools designed to help students get away with it.
As I've been saying for a while now, I think the amount of cheating that is happening is far greater than most people will acknowledge.
About two-thirds of American students are using A.I. regularly for schoolwork, according to recent surveys. While only a small slice — about 9 percent — admitted to outright cheating in one large study, much A.I. use lies in an ethical gray area.
A recent College Board survey of professors found three-quarters reported their students were using A.I. to write, and over 90 percent of respondents were concerned about plagiarism and dishonesty. Many institutions have seen a sharp increase in student disciplinary cases for academic misconduct, much of it related to the use of A.I.
The companies that are rushing into this market seem to be selling their wares by making deals with influencers on TikTok and YouTube.
In one TikTok video, Carter Smith, a young tech influencer known as CarterPCs, gleefully shows viewers how an autotyping and humanizing app called Grubby AI can make it seem like a person naturally wrote an essay that was, in fact, produced by ChatGPT.
Mr. Smith has an enormous following of 6.5 million TikTok users. The video is not labeled an ad, though Mr. Smith had previously identified himself as a paid partner of Grubby AI...
A TikTok video about another app, Typeflo, told students that they could relax, watch YouTube and eat a sandwich while their essays were produced for them.
Typeflo was registered to Daniel Huddleston, a professor at Emory University’s medical school. After being contacted by The New York Times, he said the app was developed and marketed by his teenage son, and he had not been fully aware of its social media presence.
Here's a TikTok video about Typeflo:
@usetypeflow usetypeflow.com - automate ANY TYPING #fyp #highschool #ai #trending ♬ original sound - typeflow
This clip about Grubby has been viewed almost half a million times.
@carterpcs Teachers are checking Google Doc history to catch AI cheating #grubbyai #aihumanizer #carterpcs #Tech #schoolhacks ♬ original sound - averyandon
So you get the idea. Cheating has become more sophisticated and there are lots of people out there telling high school kids how to get away with it. And of course these same tools will then transfer to college as these kids who cheated their way through high school (and got good grades) use the same tricks in college.
Some of the comments are interesting:
I'm a hiring authority where I work and will absolutely attest to the lame writing (communication) skills of recent (last 3 years) candidates and hires.
We recently off loaded (fired) two undergrad engineers and one soft-science MS for outright laziness in their mathematic products and their inability to professionally communicate through writing. We work in a high-risk science field, so good solid work is paramount.
They wrote emails like text messages (rambling non-punctuated thoughts) and then couldn't figure why they were not being taken seriously when their calculation packages were rejected immediately.
This may catch up with people eventually but probably not until they are asked to perform in a job somewhere.
