2023-05-30 19:39:00
A student from a school in Hamburg was caught using a mobile phone during a written matriculation exam. According to the German broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), the teacher also noticed that at that moment the ChatGPT chat bot was activated on the smartphone. With the help of this program, which is supported by artificial intelligence, you can very easily and quickly get fairly high-quality answers to any question. The student immediately confessed to trying to deceive the examiners. But it looks like he’s not the only one – at least 20 other schools have reported similar suspicious cases.
Teachers know about the chatbot, but…
ChatGPT was released to the public at the end of 2022 and the number of its users is growing rapidly. Among German schoolchildren, this program is very popular, because essays “written” by artificial intelligence, analyzes of literary works, reports on any topic and other texts are worthy of the highest rating. School teachers know and are well informed about the capabilities of the chatbot, but it is impossible to prove the use of AI.
Today, this problem has also touched upon the content of final exam papers. Teachers at a Hamburg school where a student using AI was caught by the hand expressed their suspicion that some of the exam papers were also written using artificial intelligence. They came to this conclusion after analyzing the general style and structure of the responses. Doubt was caused by texts that combine absolutely correct parts and contain a large number of errors.
AI use goes unpunished
Exam papers that aroused suspicion were further checked using a special program capable of recognizing texts generated by ChatGPT. However, this program can only indicate how likely it is that the text was created by AI. As a result, it was confirmed that some of the work could indeed be generated by the bot. At the same time, the examiners do not have evidence of fraud that has legal force.
The students were not caught red-handed, and therefore, according to the school administration, cases with suspicious texts will not be officially registered. This means that there will be no consequences for applicants who are alleged to have violated the rules and used AI in the exam. But the work of a student directly convicted of using a mobile phone is likely to be invalidated. At the same time, it is impossible to prove that he used not only a smartphone, but also AI prompts. Most likely, the student will have the opportunity to either retake the exam, or repeat the class and pass it next year.
Commenting on this situation, Christian Gefert, chairman of the Association of Heads of Gymnasiums and Pedagogical Practices in Hamburg Schools (Vereinigung der Leitungen Hamburger Gymnasien und Studienseminare), believes that these are isolated cases of attempted fraud at final exams. At the same time, he noted that the authorities need to develop and adopt clear legally sound rules for the use of artificial intelligence in schools. At the moment, teachers have to rely on their own experience and competence to determine who answered the exam questions – a student or artificial intelligence. According to the statistical agency Statista, in the 2021-2022 academic year, only four percent of applicants did not pass the final exams.
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#Artificial #Intelligence #Final #Exam #Germany