As the world continues to buzz with new Artificial Intelligence (AI) software and updates it can be overwhelming to keep track of it all. AI is quickly growing in popularity as it’s being introduced and intertwined into multiple different industries including the education system.
Despite AI being a new and useful tool, it is still far from being perfect. A new report released by Bloomberg shared some alarming data regarding the school grading system. University professors and teachers that are incorporating and using AI to detect plagiarism/cheating from their students’ work are being given false results.
A young woman by the name Moira Olmsted was a victim of this. Moira was struggling with a full-time job and caring for her toddler in hopes of saving enough money to get herself into a self-paced university program. She was seven months pregnant when she successfully enrolled herself into an online course at Central Methodist University in 2023, studying to become a teacher. Freshly into the fall semester, Moira submitted one of three required papers for her class. Soon after, she received a zero. Her heart sank as she desperately wanted to know why. Her teacher explained that the AI software she used to proofread students’ papers flagged hers for plagiarism; and this wasn’t the first time.
Moira, now 24, expressed the accusation as a “punch in the gut”. As someone that worked so hard to get herself into school she couldn’t believe that her standing with the university was being threatened for something she didn’t do. Moira eventually disputed the accusation to her teacher and a student coordinator, stressing that she has autism spectrum disorder and that her writing falls in a formulaic manner that must’ve triggered the AI software to be mistaken as plagiarism. Moira Olmsted is just one student out of many who are experiencing negative backlash from AI.
Bloomberg recently tested out the two leading AI detectors on 500 sample essays written before the release of ChatGPT. The results came back showing the services falsely flagged 1% to 2% of the essays likely written by AI. That percentage may seem low, but if teachers and professors are depending on AI to proofread all their students’ work, that’s going to be a lot of false accusations moving forward.
AI is an amazing tool slowly being incorporated into our everyday lives, but it is far from perfect. From an investor’s point of view, any research used to make investment decisions should be fact-checked to ensure the information is correct. As with the education system, relying on misinformation can negatively impact someone’s future.
Have a great weekend,
Tracey & Paige
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