“They're not smart enough”: this math teacher found a foolproof technique to counter his AI-based students' cheating

News JVTech “They're not smart enough”: this math teacher found a foolproof technique to counter his AI-based students' cheating

It has now been more than two years since ChatGPT, OpenAI's artificial intelligence, shook up the daily lives of tens of millions of people around the world. Of course, there are many other generative AIs, but this is the one that most people have chosen… Starting with students of all levels, who understood that this tool could help them complete their homework in record timehowever to the detriment of learning the associated knowledge.

Teachers themselves use ChatGPT, including to help them prepare for their lessons. However, they may still have difficulty determining whether a homework assignment is the result of their students' reflection. In certain subjects which require in-depth work, such as French or philosophy, it can be relatively easy to detect when a speech does not correspond to that which a student usually gives. But what to do when it comes to a subject where only one correct answer is concretely possible, like mathematics?

Lucas Markarian is a mathematics teacher in a middle and high school in Marseille. Known on TikTok under the pseudonym @lucasmaths4he has been discussing the issues associated with ChatGPT for some time now. So, he decided to take drastic measures to dissuade his students from using it at home.

“It’s simple, when the students give me a homework assignment, I tell them: “Take out a sheet, homework on the table now” and I ask them the same questions as in the homework assignment”he explains. “This technique is very effective. If they all get 19 on the homework assignment and 4 on the table assignment, then they cheated. »

The professor is not against artificial intelligence and its use. On the other hand, he deplores that his students only see this approach as a way of saving time and making no effort. “I explain to them that they lack intelligence if cheating only allowed them to have a 20 coefficient 0.25 and that it did not help them understand the exercises”he summarizes.

“They don’t know how to cheat”

Lucas Markarian believes that using ChatGPT to do their homework does not make them “bad students”but that “just means they’re not yet smart enough to know how to cheat.” Further proof of this observation: students tend to copy everything the AI ​​writes to themincluding “lyrical flights” with “formulations of mathematics teachers” who are not at their level.

The math teacher also specifies varying the pleasures, sometimes waiting a few days before imposing a table assignment on his students. He hopes, in this way, to make them understand that their cheating will be of no use.if not to make them lose points. Enough to inspire other teachers…