ChatGPT is nearly two years old—still relatively young compared to other transformative technologies that have shaped our lives. Yet, its impact has been nothing short of revolutionary. It has influenced every aspect of our daily lives, from education to shopping. For those of us in education, the question is no longer whether to use ChatGPT but how to leverage it in a way that is both ethical and academically sound.
It is true that while some students are harnessing its potential effectively, others are not. This is particularly evident in written assignments. With just a single prompt, ChatGPT—or any other AI chatbot—can generate an entire essay, often indistinguishable from human writing, at least to the untrained eye.
However, anyone who has interacted with these chatbots for a long time will tell you they’ve developed a keen ability to quickly and easily detect AI-generated content. For example, it takes me just a few seconds—certainly less than a minute—to determine whether an article is AI-written.
I’ve been using ChatGPT to assist with my writing tasks, particularly for blog posts, and I’ve become intimately familiar with its language and the way it generates content. I’ve even written an entire book on ChatGPT, delving into its nuances and understanding how it constructs responses. This deep familiarity has made it almost second nature for me to spot AI-generated text.
Let me clarify an important point here: I’m not against using ChatGPT as a tool for writing, such as an editor or research assistant. What I am opposed to is using this technology to replace you and the creative work you do. What I always recommend, especially for writing projects, is to do your homework first—draft your initial version—and only then use ChatGPT to refine it, correct typos, improve grammatical structures, and enhance the overall flow of your style.
The key is to develop your ideas and let the AI assist in polishing them, not the other way around. ChatGPT is not a thinking human; when you ask it for something, all it does is pull from its database and online content, piecing information together to produce a response. The risks of plagiarism, inaccuracies, and hallucinations are always present, and I’ve discussed this in detail in my book.
One of the potent ways to use ChatGPT is as a study assistant but unfortunately not all of our students use it this way; many will rely on it to do the entire work. The question every teacher now faces is how to spot and detect AI-generated content in students’ assignments and work.
As you may know, there are AI checkers available that claim to identify whether a piece of text is AI-generated, but the accuracy of these tools is questionable at best. They often miss the mark, especially when evaluating content written by individuals whose native language is not English, but they are still useful as one of many tools in our toolkit. While not infallible, these checkers can provide a starting point for further investigation and help flag potential cases that require a closer look. However, they should be used in conjunction with your own expertise and intuition, rather than being relied upon as the sole method of detection.
Speaking of expertise and intuition brings me to the most effective method: YOU. As teachers, we know our students, their academic abilities, and how they think. This insider knowledge is invaluable, and when combined with our understanding of AI bots, it puts us in a strong position to detect students’ use of AI.
Every time you interact with AI conversational models, pay close attention to the language they use. The more you use these tools, the clearer the patterns of linguistic structures become. You’ll notice the recurrence of certain vocabulary and grammatical structures, and over time, you’ll develop a linguistic intuition that allows you to quickly sense whether a particular statement or paragraph is AI-generated. This linguistic intuition is your most powerful tool in detecting students’ use of AI, and it is far more valuable than any AI checker on the market.
As a language scholar with a PhD in critical discourse analysis, now fully immersed in EdTech research—specifically AI—I can’t help but pay close attention to the language generated by AI bots. I approach it with a critical eye, always seeking patterns and insights to better understand how it’s structured.
And yes, AI language does follow patterns; recurring linguistic structures are evident, and through my intensive interactions with AI chatbots, I’ve been able to capture and document these.
Common Features of AI-Generated Text
In addition to the formulaic expressions you’ll explore below, I’ve identified several general features that often characterize AI-generated text. These can serve as helpful guidelines when addressing the issue of students submitting AI-generated content as their own. These features include:
1. Repetition and Redundancy
AI-generated language often adheres to a predetermined structure, leading to the repetition of similar linguistic and syntactic patterns throughout entire paragraphs. This is why the text produced by AI can sometimes feel monotonous and lacking in emotional depth or variation.
2. Verbosity
AI tends to provide verbose explanations in order to make the text sound more comprehensive. For example, instead of saying “The sky is blue,” an AI might generate, “It is widely observed that the sky exhibits a blue hue due to the scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere.”
3. Generic Statements
A recurring issue with AI-generated content is the use of generic and sometimes vague statements. These phrases often lack the specificity and context needed to be truly insightful. For example, statements like “technology is changing the world” or “education is important for everyone” sound meaningful but fail to provide depth or detail.
4. Use of Passive Voice
Again this aligns well with what we said earlier about AI language lacking emotion depth. The use of passive voice often hides agency and makes the doer of the action obscure making the text feel impersonal, lacking personal voice, an unique perspective.
5. Formulaic Structures
AI often follows predictable patterns in writing, like starting paragraphs with a general statement, followed by supporting details, and ending with a summary statement. This can make the text feel formulaic.
6. Overuse of Clichés
AI generated language often contains overused clichés and commonly used phrases such such as “a step in the right direction,” “the tip of the iceberg,” or “only time will tell.”
7. Syntactic and Orthographic Perfection
AI-generated text is typically free from typos, punctuation mistakes, spelling errors, and grammatical inconsistencies. While this alone isn’t a definitive indicator that a text is AI-generated, it can raise red flags in an educational setting. When a student submits a flawlessly polished paper, it may prompt further scrutiny.
Commonly Used Word in AI Generated Text
Below are some commonly used words that I was able to identify from my analysis of the piles of AI generated text I worked on for numerous months. As a teacher, you can use these expressions as signposts to help determine whether a student’s assignment may be AI-generated. However, remember to use your intuition and common sense—these indicators are meant to assist, but they don’t necessarily confirm AI generation. While they suggest a higher probability, it’s important to take them with a grain of salt.
Final thoughts
I want to emphasize that the insights I’ve shared above stem from my own informal research, conducted through extensive interaction with AI chatbots over the past year. Drawing on my expertise as a language scholar and my experience in EdTech, I’ve sought to unravel the patterns of AI-generated language. My goal is to empower teachers with the knowledge they need to independently identify AI-generated text. These insights could also serve as the foundation for a more rigorous research paper for those interested in exploring this topic further.
The post Important Tips on How to Identify AI-Generated Content in Student Assignments appeared first on Educators Technology.
Title: Important Tips on How to Identify AI-Generated Content in Student Assignments
URL: https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2024/08/important-tips-on-how-to-identify-ai-generated-content-in-student-assignments.html
Source: Educational Technology
Source URL: https://www.educatorstechnology.com
Date: August 23, 2024 at 12:54AM
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