A student from one of the Ontario Universities has recently come to Reddit saying that he noticed an insane amount of ChatGPT-produced content in their groupmates’ works. Is everybody cheating now? Or are these just other crazy allegations?
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Key Takeaways
- Students are increasingly relying on ChatGPT to complete their assignments, with AI-generated content becoming prevalent in most university courses.
- Still, ChatGPT’s writing style, particularly the use of participial phrases and standardized formatting, makes it easy to identify AI-generated work
- To combat the rise of AI cheating, universities may need to implement stricter oversight and return to in-class exams.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that, with the surge of AI, students now have more opportunities to cheat through their studies than ever. No wonder Reddit got shaken by the news of the growing concern at a university in Ontario, where students appear to be increasingly relying on ChatGPT to complete their assignments.
One student, who identifies as a “power user” of the AI tool, detailed how they have recognized the distinct tone and formatting typical of ChatGPT in many of their groupmates’ weekly discussion posts. The issue is so prevalent that some assignments are submitted even without proofreading, with the original ChatGPT formatting, including bold text and bullet points. This troubling trend has got the student questioning whether cheating has reached the epidemic levels at their university.
How Can One Recognize ChatGPT Writing
If you are wondering how the OP can even distinguish between the ChatGPT and human-written content, they have keenly deciphered the writing patterns and included them in the post. So, according to this Redditor, the main thing that gives AI away is the standardized sentence structure, particularly “participial phrases.” These phrases, which begin with present participles (verbs ending in -ing), add information to the main clause.
The OP provided an example of a sentence that might read, “The ad was visually appealing, featuring a sleek design,” with the participial phrase “featuring a sleek design” added by AI to give additional detail. Such patterns are frequently used by ChatGPT, making its writing more vivid and easy to identify. Additionally, the Redditor also added a list of the participle words often used by the popular chat bot in its writing:
| Highlighting Illustrating Featuring Demonstrating Showcasing Emphasizing Presenting Depicting Revealing Exemplifying |
The Reddit user also notes that their peers’ assignments often include AI formatting, such as bold text and bullet points, which often goes against the general task requirements.
Can This Type of Writing Even Be Used?
Even though ChatGPT sentence structure and wording may seem very odd and telling in an academic setting, there’s at least one field where this type of writing can be perceived as natural. And this field is content writing.
This view was echoed by many content writers saying that ChatGPT actually writes good and easy-to-read sentences, that can be especially helpful when creating a sales copy. Nonetheless, many still agreed that the arguments that this well-known AI usually makes are “void of information” and, as one Redditor put it “just written in a way that makes me go ‘bleugh“.” Thus, even when writing non-academic content and articles with ChatGPT, the process requires a lot of proofreading and extra work in terms of proper prompt engineering.
Is There Really A Cheating Epidemic?
Now, let’s see how Redditors answered the main OP’s question “So am I crazy, or is everyone just cheating now?”. According to many people answering the post, cheating with AI is a real issue now, with actually too many students giving up on doing homework themselves. And you know the situation is bad when peers start calling out each other on cheating too.
“Yea I did a short course not long ago, everything was ChatGPT, the teacher was old and didn’t realize, it was a complete joke lol.”
“Same thing at my university. So many people just copying discussion posts(and sometimes even whole essays) through chatGPT because they don’t want to do the work. Same with a lot of coding assignments. They just toss the Assigment document into the AI, and ask it to create their project. It’s a shame as the AIs are a great learning tool when used properly”
Even professors can’t keep being blind to this issue, as their classrooms and courses get flooded with AI-generated homework assignments.
“Yup. University professor here. Can confirm. Good luck to everyone outsourcing their thinking. The future belongs to the critical thinkers.”
Some, however, think, that this cheating epidemic that started going around thanks to ChatGPT is just a symptom of a much bigger issue.
The Key Point
The response from the Reddit community to the concern about ChatGPT-fueled cheating in universities reveals a range of sentiments. Many agree that the issue is widespread and largely frustrating. The AI detectors we currently have often fail to provide relevant results, leading to dismissed cheating cases due to insufficient evidence. With such blatant use of ChatGPT, it is clear that the use of the tool can get spoiled for those who work with it responsibly, integrating AI to organize thoughts rather than blindly copy-pasting content.
Of course, as with any issue discussed on Reddit, some commenters took a broader view, arguing that cheating has always been part of academia, exacerbated now by rising education costs and mismanagement. They suggest the problem lies more with educational institutions treating education as a business rather than evolving their teaching methods. While some complain about the situation, others see it as an inevitable continuation of longstanding academic dishonesty. So, with everything considered, the only true solution we can currently have to minimize the issue lies in going back to in-class exams and stricter oversight of completed tasks to maintain integrity.
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