alt Hacker NewsKenyans Did College Students' Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived
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How come I didn't know that everyone else was cheating in college? Here I was learning the content like a sucker and then being useful in my job after graduation.
I didn’t realize how many people cheated in college until I got an email from my computer graphics professor a year after I graduated asking me to remove the projects I did for the class from GitHub because a substantial amount of his students were copying from them.
Flattering, in a way.
Never went to college, but I made pretty good coin writing papers for friends who did.
It's always been my understanding that virtually everyone cheats (doctors/non-computer engineers aside)
> helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish their [degree]
What odd phrasing. Counterpoint: "Helping" them cheat actually harms them, by ensuring they get the degree without learning or demonstrating mastery of the subject. There's a good reason why students caught cheating are harshly punished.
Something about large debts and widespread cheating makes me think we don't need so many students staying for 4 years.
Maybe more coop programs and less class time.
I kinda wonder if there was some secondary educational benefit for the workers doing this
When AI watermark detection is properly up and running, there may yet be a market here.
As long as the Kenyans don't try and use AI themselves.
They are still doing it, and not just in Kenya. The bar has just risen, and that's all. Unis are using Pangram, GPT-0 and a lot of plagiarism detectors, and the cheaters are using ghostwriters to get homeworks, assignments done that pass the AI detectors.
Difference between then and now is back then you still had to clear an in person exam. Not a lot of room for cheating when you were on your own standing at a blackboard on front of the professor.
Amazon gave up on Mechanical Turk recently, too.[1]
If everything you do for money goes in and out over a wire, you're fucked.
So the unethical helping of unethical students is being subverted by unethical language models… What a world!
I guess I should not be surprised by people being sympathetic to this “business model.”
RIP CHEGG
The fact that cheating works is pretty damning for the utility of colleges.
I spent a lot of my life outside the English-speaking world, and this was a small sideline for a while.
I get it wasn't the nicest way to earn a living. My day job was loftier but poorly-paid.
Still, I've got respect for anyone who got by doing this, it can be fun and interesting with the right material, but the clients are often dicks and the money is rubbish. It's quite stressful too, even given the low stakes. I never wanted a bad grade.
My more significant sideline, and the one that ultimately got me into good work, was copy-editing. Also dead by AI.
It's hard not to be bitter about this. I needed those jobs to keep me going whilst I made it in my chosen field. The rich kids in my sector never had to hustle and won't be affected. The folks doing it out of Nairobi, and the state school kids trying to get by overseas will.
A case of AI pulling the ladder.