Surge in UK University Students Using AI To Complete Work 53
More than 90% of UK undergraduate students now use AI in their studies, up from two-thirds a year ago, according to a Higher Education Policy Institute survey released Wednesday. The poll of 1,041 full-time undergraduates found 88% used generative AI such as ChatGPT for assessments, compared with 53% in 2024, with science students more likely to use the technology than humanities peers. Half of students cited "saving time" and "improving work quality" as their primary motivations.
The proportion considering it acceptable to include AI-generated text after editing rose to 25% from 17% last year, while only 6% approved using AI content without editing. "Every assessment must be reviewed in case it can be completed easily using AI," said Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi. The report identified "persistent digital divides" in AI competency, with men and students from wealthier backgrounds more likely to be frequent users.
The proportion considering it acceptable to include AI-generated text after editing rose to 25% from 17% last year, while only 6% approved using AI content without editing. "Every assessment must be reviewed in case it can be completed easily using AI," said Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi. The report identified "persistent digital divides" in AI competency, with men and students from wealthier backgrounds more likely to be frequent users.
Cognitive debt (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason we still learn math that we'll never use. It's to learn how to think. I can't imagine AI is contributing much to cognitive development.
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There's a reason we still learn math that we'll never use. It's to learn how to think. I can't imagine AI is contributing much to cognitive development.
That's a feature, not a bug. If the AI prophets get their way, human beings will cease thinking at all, and rely completely on them for all information, all decision making, and all life planning. Hail to the new overlords, we're finally saved from ourselves!
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That's a feature, not a bug. If the AI prophets get their way, human beings will cease thinking at all, and rely completely on them for all information, all decision making, and all life planning. Hail to the new overlords, we're finally saved from ourselves!
That sounds about right. It's also concerning that so many of them (50%-ish) claim it is "improving work quality". I guess it depends on the usage context, but it seems like you have to manipulate the output to clean up the results it gives you more often than not.
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That sounds about right. It's also concerning that so many of them (50%-ish) claim it is "improving work quality". I guess it depends on the usage context, but it seems like you have to manipulate the output to clean up the results it gives you more often than not.
That is one thing I do not get. When I do something myself, do it right and see it working, that gives me a significant amount of job satisfaction. Do these people lack that experience?
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It's also concerning that so many of them (50%-ish) claim it is "improving work quality". I guess it depends on the usage context, but it seems like you have to manipulate the output to clean up the results it gives you more often than not.
I am currently studying a STEM subject at a UK university. There are a significant number of foreign students on this campus (engineering / mathematics / computer science / business) and, for some of them at least, English is not their strong suit. Add in those local students for whom writing decent English is problematic, despite their ability to code like demons, and it's fairly easy to see that many of these people would see the output of an LLM as improving the quality of their work.
In many cases their
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I am currently studying a STEM subject at a UK university. There are a significant number of foreign students on this campus (engineering / mathematics / computer science / business) and, for some of them at least, English is not their strong suit. Add in those local students for whom writing decent English is problematic, despite their ability to code like demons, and it's fairly easy to see that many of these people would see the output of an LLM as improving the quality of their work.
In many cases their perception would actually be true - although I suspect that much of their enthusiasm stems from the ease of use, the fact they're not required to strain the brain / spend the time required to improve these particular skills.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. I can see how that would improve things for some. Thanks for the insight.
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One thing I remember is a buddy of mine is a guitarist and remember them telling me that they learned a whole bunch of bad technique from various teachers back in the day because they just didn't have anyone or anything to tell them not to do that. This fundamentally limited there playing skills because they learned bad technique and it's extremely hard bordering on
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The problem is figuring out the steps is part of the learning process, and yes we have bad teachers. But what happens when the current generation grow up and become teachers we will have even worse teachers. Which will intern teach the AI that will become worse. The problem will not develop over night it will take a generation or two and will be very hard to fix. We are already seeing declines in test scores https://hechingerreport.org/ma... [hechingerreport.org] AI will just make it worse. Anecdotally I go shops and when the ti
Again with math not so much (Score:2)
Although I suppose but some word problems there is a little bit more creative thinking involved.
But even then 99% of that is still just following patterns. At the end of the day your teacher gives you a whole bunch of word problems that fit specific patterns and you're really just going to get those patterns on the test. I got good at test taking back in the day because I could figure out
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With math you're not really figuring out the steps somebody is telling you to steps and you're memorizing them.
Oh? I had do to several proof each week in linear algebra and calculus to even be allowed to take the exam. And then I had to do more in logic, term-rewriting and deduction systems. Well, that was for a Master's in CS, but still.
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Per his own admission, rsilvergun is a low functioning autistic without any savantism to make up for it. Almost like Chris Chan, except Chris Chan has had sex with at least one woman who wasn't his mother.
Re: Cognitive debt (Score:2)
IMHO, the rich choose humanities for their kids not because it teaches then critical thinking, but rather because no-humanities education is viewed by them as some sort of vocational education - educating someone to have a trade, to take commands and execute.
An aristocrat doesn't want his kid trained for a servant.
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AI, like any other tool, can be misused. It's the responsibility of the teachers
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You remind me of James H. Schmitz's SF short story "The Pork Chop Tree" (Analog, February 1965). You can read it here:
https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys... [wasabisys.com]
starting on page 42 of the magazine. A remarkably thought-provoking take on predation and its alternatives.
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There's a reason we still learn math that we'll never use. It's to learn how to think. I can't imagine AI is contributing much to cognitive development.
LOL. no. We learn math that we'll never use because of the foolish idea that inside every child is a math genius waiting to come out. "Educators" have seen Stand and Deliver too many times.
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It looks like AI will retard or prevent cognitive development for many. At a huge cost for society.
Re: Cognitive debt (Score:2)
So, AI will create a problem, which it then will solve, or attempt to solve. How convenient.
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Indeed. Unless it fails to actually solve that problem, which is a very real possibility. Then we are screwed.
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As I see it, the reason for going to school and acquiring skills such as how to do mathematics and/or how to write clearly and coherently is training the LLM that resides inside our skull. I think that the process of learning something makes you better at learning in general, which then applies to other things as well.
The question is: is it beneficial to learn how to use your brains? That would depend on who or what you want to be. Some people can be very successful being e.
This is just cheating. (Score:5, Insightful)
How it is Used Matters (Score:5, Insightful)
We did have lab and project reports which contributed somewhat to our grades and there AI could have been used (had it been available back then) but my experience with current AI is that it is useless for actually authoring anything scientific: its writing is very vague, leaves out details and would get an extremely poor grade. What it is good at is cleaning up and editing text to improve clarity and succinctness but for that you do have to write the material first and then check it's output to ensure it did not hallucinate extra stuff.
I've got no problems with that sort of use and even encourage my own students to use it that way. It means that you've done the work yourself and are using AI like an advanced grammar/spell checker to make the text better. Chances are that you may even pick up better writing skills yourself from that. So the fact that students use AI nowadays is not a problem, the question is HOW are they using AI. Although, unless the UK university system has shifted significantly from exams as assessment, it's hard to see how AI will have much impact on most of the assessment that matters for your degree.
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shut up you moron.
What an odd reply based on what was written. I found Roger's comments to be insightful. It gives a teacher's/professor's perspective on AI usage in their classroom. It's pretty much the type of insightful content that helps everyone see/understand a different perspective from their own.
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Look at that account's posting history; I think they aim for a decade "Score: -1" streak achievement. Incredible, given also the 6-digit ID.
Ah, that is commitment to their bit.
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What it is good at is cleaning up and editing text to improve clarity and succinctness but for that you do have to write the material first and then check it's output to ensure it did not hallucinate extra stuff .
In short, it is completely useless, but sorta fashionable.
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It sounds a bit like spellcheck back in the day. I grew up when spellcheck was just becoming available, and was a function you had to trigger manually and let it chew through the text for a while. My parents said that it improved my spelling better than any classwork did, because it focused on words I actually used and gave relatively immediate feedback.
Expanding that to grammar is a lot more difficult, but happening now apparently.
It sounds a bit like having your parents (educated but not in your degree
Useful, just not THAT useful (Score:2)
n short, it is completely useless, but sorta fashionable.
No, editing text for style, brevity, clerity etc. is being useful. So far I'd say that's the only use for it that I seen though. So it's not useless just nowhere near as useful as all the hype suggests....at least not yet.
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I agree with you that it is how its used, my problem is that I don't think we as a society will be able to control how its used. People take the easy option its in our very nature.
Honestly if you don't care if the about the students writing style then just do not mark on that. Of course that depends what exactly you are trying to teach, but if you want to teach them writing have a course on writing. That is important for post grad research papers, but if you are teaching a doctor, its much more important th
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I have a daughter studying vet nursing and every essay assignment has to be X words +/- 10%, probably 20% of the time spent trying to be in this word limit. This seems to be a institution wide policy. I am not saying you do this, but I think the people who set this brain dead, policy should not be allowed anywhere near students.
I mean, what do you do? Artificial limits are crap, but 1) students need to know how much text is expected for a good mark (roughly!), what's considered too little and what's too much. "Too much" is a thing, as some students go wild and produce booklets, either because they want to ensure they get a good mark, or because they like writing. Also, somebody has to assess those writeups fairly, and guess what, we are not allocated all the time in the world to do that. So the +/- 10% or 20% is a pragmatic choice
And nobody is surprised... (Score:4, Insightful)
Post-covid there has been a shift towards coursework, which is far easier to cheat. Attendance, if not enforced, cannot be used to inform knowledge/progress of student, so they can be away for a long time, then return with completed coursework.
Because of the chaotic handling, no surprise students adopt a "whatever, I'm just going to use it and lie about it" strategy as much as possible, as that definitely gives them the edge. And if you think "Ah design your assessments/coursework differently so they can't be gamed with AI" well that just doesn't work anymore. The only reasonable way of assessing is in-person, in a controlled environment (in-class tests with limited internet access or oral exams), anything else is a joke. Not just in the UK of course.
Pretend degrees (Score:1)
Any test that is bunch of text is sus to being with.
We need more doers, less talkers. IE no more sales and marketing people in charge of anything but taking out the trash.
Delaying the inevitable (Score:3)
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I always feel 2 ways on this. At least in IT, I don't necessarily expect you to know much / anything specific. It changes all the time. What I want to know is can you learn stuff or figure it out. I don't much care *how* you accomplish that stuff as long as the output is effective.
I guess if I had to test someone, I'd mostly be interested in troubleshooting technique - but if AI leads you through that well - IDK, $20 a month or so is probably less than quite a few other tool costs for an employee anyway.
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Sure - I just mean there's probably a lot of places that just want the output at a cheap rate in any field. It's not good - just what the economy seems to push.
I'm also not sure at the learning level that "old learning" is inherently better than using new tools. It would seem silly to me to be against EEs using Cadence tools say - because you didn't have to learn "how to do it by hand". You're right - if a very basic sort of quiz is useful to you - great. I just figure that in many fields you're going to be
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I made a blanket policy, based on painful experience of interviewing far to many of them, that we would not hire anyone from a certain central PA university's EE program. It was widely known that their exams came from an equally widely known pool of questions that were rehearsed and model answers practiced.
Consequently, I had EEs with no idea of how to use Ohms law, how to analyse a simple network, how to work out the best resistor value to drive an LED, or how to design a basic amplifier.
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they were openly wondering what the point of learning anything was, since you could just look everything up on your phone at an AI prompt
The world that is around you, is the world that is around you; however, it is not actually that simple. Just because you can see something does not mean that you understand what it is. A simple example would be the first Native that saw a gun. They weren't afraid in the least as a gun doesn't even look dangerous. At best, it is a stick. Needless to say, they found out real quick...
Without actually learning stuff, you could be staring straight at the solution to all of the world's energy issues and never eve
It feels like we're producing (Score:2)
... A generation of editors with no authors. A whole lot of students that are getting really good at correcting and re-voicing without developing any ability to be truly creative. These will be the same people complaining about "everything being the same" in the latest video game or TV series. If you don't build those muscles, you won't have them when you need them.
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I look forward ... (Score:2)
Interesting what buzzwords do (Score:1)
What's interesting is that if people put "generative AI" many people seem to read it as actually making sense.
Basically, the idea is the same as if you were going to the gym and while there paying people to exercise for you. That would sound stupid to people. But because doing the same thing with learning and AI has buzzwords in it, it sounds reasonable to many.
Just told mine I will fail them... (Score:2)
... if they hand in AI generated text, but have no clue what is in there. Takes a bit more work on my side because I do not only have to grade their submissions, but also have a 5-10 minute discussion with them about it to verify they actually know what is in there. Yes, work for me, work for them, but education done right is work. And those that pass will eventually see the wisdom of this.
Preparing for future replaceability (Score:2)
The more AI is used in your work, the less you will be required to perform it in the future. If your work is primarily done using AI don't be surprised when somebody uses AI to do your work. Students should be worried about "their own" value-add.