China Shuts Down AI Tools During Nationwide College Exams 27
According to Bloomberg, several major Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, have temporarily disabled certain chatbot features during the gaokao college entrance exams to prevent cheating. "Popular AI apps, including Alibaba's Qwen and ByteDance's Doubao, have stopped picture recognition features from responding to questions about test papers, while Tencent's Yuanbao, Moonshot's Kimi have suspended photo-recognition services entirely during exam hours," adds The Verge. From the report: The rigorous multi-day "gaokao" exams are sat by more than 13.3 million Chinese students between June 7-10th, each fighting to secure one of the limited spots at universities across the country. Students are already banned from using devices like phones and laptops during the hours-long tests, so the disabling of AI chatbots serves as an additional safety net to prevent cheating during exam season.
When asked to explain the suspension, Bloomberg reports the Yuanbao and Kimi chatbots responded that functions had been disabled "to ensure the fairness of the college entrance examinations." Similarly, the DeepSeek AI tool that went viral earlier this year is also blocking its service during specific hours "to ensure fairness in the college entrance examination,"according to The Guardian. The Guardian notes that the news is being driven by students on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. "The gaokao entrance exam incites fierce competition as it's the only means to secure a college placement in China, driving concerns that students may try to improve their chances with AI tools," notes The Verge.
When asked to explain the suspension, Bloomberg reports the Yuanbao and Kimi chatbots responded that functions had been disabled "to ensure the fairness of the college entrance examinations." Similarly, the DeepSeek AI tool that went viral earlier this year is also blocking its service during specific hours "to ensure fairness in the college entrance examination,"according to The Guardian. The Guardian notes that the news is being driven by students on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. "The gaokao entrance exam incites fierce competition as it's the only means to secure a college placement in China, driving concerns that students may try to improve their chances with AI tools," notes The Verge.
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Hard to say, as in in Asia rot learning is pretty the norm.
And exam usually means: either you know the desired answer, or you don't.
There is not much in "creativity" or "understanding" or god for bid: "comprehension".
This is one of the big problems: the smart guys get sieved out, and not selected.
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well, tfa says phones and laptops are not allowed during the examinationa which are in person, i guess this would only target institutional computers. but, true, it doesn't really make much sense. in any case:
We were unable to find any public announcements from the AI companies mentioned, with The Guardian reporting
... the guardian and bloomberg quoting each other's stories without any actual references? that's sooo weird ...
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They don't know that you can run an ai on your own computer? No external access or computing resources required.
From the summary: "Students are already banned from using devices like phones and laptops during the hours-long tests".
I expect the test is from a supervised environment, like at school. The fear being using a phone might not be overt enough to be noticed.
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Those models don't really work all that well in the general case unless you have pretty massive amounts of RAM and computing to dedicate. Pretty much all local models that are useful locally out of the box have been tuned for one specific thing, like coding.
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You realize of course that Exams are also highly tuned for one specific thing, like "20th Century English Literature", "Linear Algebra", "Criminlology: Overview of the Prison System", and "Axiomatic Meta-logic".
Eigenvalues are all but guaranteed to show up in the the 2nd exam, and all but guaranteed not to be mentioned in the other three.
PS That last one is highly recommended, but its a little dense.
Re: They've never heard of llama.cpp? (Score:2)
But where do I download a model tuned for 20th century literature?
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If there's 10s of millions of people in china looking to cheat on their exams using llama models... i figure the "market" will make suitable models happen pretty quickly.
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https://huggingface.co/ [huggingface.co] ???
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... the guardian and bloomberg quoting each other's stories without any actual references? that's sooo weird ...
No, my AI just confirmed it as totally legit.
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Guardian Newspaper; Bloomberg
It's turtles, turtles all the way down.
"fighting to secure one of the limited spots" (Score:1)
It sounds like they need more universities.
IMHO, anyone who graduates from high school or equivalent should be able to get into a bottom-end-of-the-selection-scale college or university if they have a pulse and a bank account, no entrance exam required (if they are straight out of high school, they may need to spend a few years in the workforce to build up that bank account). Whether you can proceed towards graduation depends on how well you do each term.
If China doesn't have enough low-end colleges ("Comm
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It's not unlike the Olympics. Even if you fail to win, you still win.
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I'm not saying drop ALL competitive entrance exams. I'm saying you should have enough of the "Junior College-equivalent"-level schools so that anyone with a pulse and the money can take first-term courses.
Leave the stress of competition for people who want to go to a mid-or-higher-teir school.
What is the value of a Junior College 2-year degree over a trade school that just grants a "career diploma"? In the United States,a 2-year degree with good grades can let you transfer into a low- or mid-teir 4-year s
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They are apparently working on that.
check the table
https://journals.sagepub.com/d... [sagepub.com]
And google AI summarised (though I couldn't quickly check if fully correct): "China adds around 100 to 200 new universities each year, primarily focusing on expanding capacity and improving the quality of higher education. The total number of higher education institutions in China has seen significant growth in recent decades, reaching 3,074 in 2023. "
Top univers
Ripe civil servants' skulls thump resoundingly. (Score:3)
Amazing (Score:2)
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Part of the state.
I know, that's why its good. Our system fucking sucks and we have no control whatsoever