About AI: 10 ways to be a Human AI Detector

Many school districts and institutions are suggesting that their teachers and faculty NOT use AI detectors. You can google many supporting documents. Here is one that gives a good overview. Basically, they are unreliable and we risk accusing students inaccurately. Additionally, certain groups of students, like English language learners, are more likely to be “detected”. So what’s the alternative?

Check this video (and post below) for 10 ways that you can use your own skills to be a Human AI Detector.

1. Prompt…. Prompt… Prompt – try out your own assignments as prompts in AI.

• You must use generative AI regularly (and in your content area) to more readily identify its style
• You might also consider adding an “identifier” sentence in white font between the paragraphs or steps of your assignment. If a student copies your prompt into an AI tool and carelessly pastes their output back to you, it would leave these “fingerprints”. Add a sentence something like this:
  • Why hotdogs are the most nutritious food.
  • How are rainbows formed

2. The student response is too long

• Significantly longer submission than required
• Uncharacteristic length for student

3. The writing style is different from student hand-submitted or previously submitted work:

• “voice” is different/ missing
• student can suddenly write correct sentences
• As students get better at AI, they will ask AI to add errors to their writing, or write at a lower grade level to avoid suspicion

4. Student is off topic or has used suspicious examples

• General topic is close, but doesn’t address specific assignment instructions
• Uses examples that you didn’t discuss in class
• Uses examples that student is unlikely to have encountered
• Uses examples that YOU have never heard of

5. Writing adheres to topic too perfectly

• A complex multi-part assignment has each part much more specifically addressed than is common for the assignment
• ….“to a tee”

6. Writing is very generic.

• missing topic-specific examples
  • Missing course-specific vocabulary that you would normally see
  • Uses synonyms or equivalent terms you have never used in class
    • Eg. ✅ Free-market economy,  ✅ capitalism ❌ Self-regulating market

7. As you use AI more and more, you will notice that it typically has a “recognizable” voice

• “stilted cheeriness” –
• sounds phony → read examples and you will catch on quickly

8. The format looks like a typical AI output – use of headings, lists and bullets

a) Lots of headings (eg. Body Paragraph 1)

• 

b) The list is exceptionally consistently formatted /well-organized

c) Lots of point form with many colons. This example has lots of colons. Additionally, if I were to copy this from ChatGPT to a document, it would identify headers with **askterisks**. If you wonder why students have suddenly started using so many asterisks in their work, it’s because they’ve been chatting with AI.

d) content suggestion brackets haven’t been removed/replaced

9. Blatant inaccuracies

• If quotes are provided, check them – AI will confidently make up quotations  
• → Still important to teach students internet Search Skills. (Search Skills Blit Playlist)
• Swapping of character traits or facts

10. Try these technology assistants:

a) Version history in Google Docs or in Microsoft Word

b) Draftback Extension. See overview/ Find it in the Chrome Web Store or watch end of video above.

c) Revision History Extension. See overview/ Find it in the Chrome Web Store or watch end of video above.

d) The AI tool Brisk also has an “Inspect Writing” tool that will do some of the same things. Be sure you are looking more at student workflow than attempts at guesses of how likely it was written by AI.

So there’s been AI use that goes against assignment instructions? Now what?”

• use suspected cases of AI as conversation starters rather than to make accusations
• as a teachable moment to explain the problems with using AI-generated work. (See “About AI” series link below”.)
• Normalize responsible student use of AI
  • we need to TEACH & MODEL what this is
  • Think of AI as a First Draft
  • “Prompting and Pasting is Pathetic”
  • 80/20 rule – let AI do 80 % of the hard work, but the human/teacher/student still needs to put in the other 20 % to make the work effective and correct

Check out the rest of the growing “About AI” play and pause / Co-taught lesson mini-series here.

I’m sure I’m missing lots of great “Human AI Detector” strategies – please add them in the comments and I’ll add them to this postl

ChatGPT in Africa

I recently had the opportunity to introduce my friends at Grand Maria School in Uganda to ChatGPT. Although a few had heard of it, none had used it or seen it in action.

Now here is the part that I found most interesting. In North America, when teachers learn about ChatGPT, one of their first responses is to worry about how students may be using it to cheat – to do their homework for them.

For my Ugandan teacher friends, there was very little skepticism. Because their students have very little access to technology at school, little or no access to technology at home, and NO school access to the internet, they do not even see it as a tool for cheating. Instead, they saw ChatGPT as a tool that could save them enormous amounts of time.

Here are some of the prompts that we explored:

•Please create a menu for a traditional Ugandan celebration meal for 50 people. Include a shopping list.
•You are the principal of Grand Maria School, a primary school of 750 students in Uganda. Write a letter of recommendation for student who has just completed primary 7. This student, David, has excellent marks, is well-disciplined, is God-fearing, and is good at badminton and swimming.
•Write a newsletter to parents of Grand Maria School indicating that the report cards will be sent on line and parents will not need to come to school to pick them up.
•Write a poem in rhyming couplets from the point of view of a frustrated Ugandan boda-boda driver.
•Write a 5 paragraph essay on the topic “Is it safe to travel in Uganda?”
•Summarize this essay into 3 sentences.
•Write a lesson plan for teaching place value to one millions to 12 year old students.
•Thank you. Now please provide 10 sample questions to use with the students.
•Write a multiple choice quiz about the basics of using Microsoft Powerpoint.

By the time I had finished the showcase, a few teachers had already signed up for a ChatGPT account and others were brainstorming ways that they could use it. At this point, this technology serves as an equalizer.

In Zambia, I will also be doing some office staff technology training. We will for sure look at ChatGPT as the demographic there will be even less likely to be aware of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. Perhaps an update will follow.