AI and plagiarism detector

[enjay]

Can anyone recommend a good AI detector which is used in their school? Also, what "score" do you consider as evidence something has been AI-written? I put a few different paragraphs from ChatGPT through a checker, and it generally scored them around 55-60% AI, which I could get down to 15% using a "humaniser" tool. Some random paragraphs of my own writing were 2-3%.

[sigma]

Probably not what you want to hear:

 

https://www.theedadvocate.org/the-ai-detection-debacle-why-uk-universities-are-ditching-flawed-tools/

 

Quote

Across the UK, a significant number of universities are now abandoning or severely restricting the use of these very same AI detection tools. This isn’t just a minor tweak; it’s a major retreat, driven by a growing, uncomfortable realization: these tools just aren’t reliable enough. The core issue? A surprisingly high rate of false positives, leading to innocent students being wrongly accused. It’s a messy situation, and it’s forcing institutions to rethink their entire strategy for dealing with AI in the classroom, pushing them towards more nuanced, and frankly, more human-centric approaches.

 

My niece had problems with some school work she handed in and was falsely accused of having produced it using AI.   

[machy]

7 minutes ago, sigma said:

Probably not what you want to hear:

 

https://www.theedadvocate.org/the-ai-detection-debacle-why-uk-universities-are-ditching-flawed-tools/

 

 

My niece had problems with some school work she handed in and was falsely accused of having produced it using AI.   

the irony in the bit you quoted sounding like its come from AI

 

 

 

[enjay]

50 minutes ago, machy said:

the irony in the bit you quoted sounding like its come from AI

 

55% human, according to the tool I was using earlier! EDIT - I've just tried a couple of others, and they all flagged that passage as being heavily AI-generated.

 

To address @sigma's comment though, the teacher isn't proposing using the tool in isolation, but as part of the evidence to support their professional judgement based on the child's previous body of work. The article makes exactly that point further down:

 

Quote

The implication was clear: using these scores as the sole basis for an accusation of plagiarism is fundamentally unfair and, as it turns out, legally risky

 

[dmj]

For this to work, you'd have to feed all the children's work to the (AI) plagiarism detector before it could 'get to know' the students and what their writing style is like. 

Besides; LLM's all speak in different ways, and can easily be told to change their style - mine speaks like a caveman to save me output tokens. 

Sounds like a horribly expensive way to replace a teacher, who could do this with their eyes closed. 

[psydii]

2 hours ago, dmj said:

...a teacher, who could [read the kids' work] with their eyes closed. 

They can do many amazing things better than AI, but I've never seen one quite that good.

[Primus]

There's also an argument under the Equality Act since lots of AI writes in a similar fashion to neurodivergent people so people with neurodivergence are flagged more often and unfairly.

 

Ultimately the advice going back to them is that it's not part of evidence supporting their professional judgement in any way and the use of it isn't acceptable.

[pete]

We also push the "if you've been teaching Geoff for 3 years and you think that Geoff didn't write this, you're going to have a higher degree of accuracy than an AI tool" line. With an "unless it's an EPQ (or other independent project) and Geoff has picked his specialist subject of Pokemon" caveat.