Like all professors, I’ve spent the last two years watching AI creep into student work. I was lucky to get a head start on my colleagues, since I worked as a red teamer for OpenAI before the GPT-4 release. That was an early eye-opener. By 2022 I had started to experiment with podcasts, group work, and other so called non-traditional assignments to avoid the inevitable.
A couple months ago I finished a semester where I think I’ve temporarily defeated AI in the classroom. Not in the sense that students don’t use it — I’m sure they do — but in the sense that it’s not yet a substitute for completing the assignments and getting a good grade. Here’s my method, tell me if I’m being naive.
The first thing to admit as an instructor is you cannot spend time “catching” AI. Except in a few obvious cases, it’s too easy to disguise. You don’t have the time, the tools (the detectors are bullshit), or the institutional backing. More importantly, you shouldn’t have to turn yo…
