What can a school oppose to neural networks and whether it is necessary to fight it

Robots inject, not humans: schoolchildren shifted homework to bots

Almost every one of us, being a schoolboy, secretly dreamed of “working robots, not humans”. It seems that now we have come close to this in reality. Chatbots have appeared that can generate a quite decent essay or report, solve a problem of any complexity, effortlessly “pass” the Unified State Examination in any subject … Yes, even write a whole diploma, which was recently demonstrated by one graduate of a humanitarian university. The voices of experts are increasingly heard – the emergence of neural networks based on artificial intelligence will completely change the system of teaching and assessment in schools.

Modern schoolchildren, who, one might say, were born with a keyboard in their hands, got a feel for the possibilities of chatbots much faster than adults. Especially a lot of time and effort is saved on essays. And on all sorts of applied tasks in literature, such as comparative analyzes of the images of heroes from the fundamental works of the classics. And literally minutes are spent on reports on history, social science, geography, “Fundamentals of Spirituality” and so on. And those for printing.

“MK” also tried to be “electronic Oblomov”: he asked the neural network to make a quotation of the main characters of Pushkin’s story “Dubrovsky”. The bot completed this in less than a minute, while even with Internet search engines, such a task would take at least half an hour. The electronic mind found the necessary quotes and concluded: “The characters of the main characters in the story Dubrovsky contrast vividly with each other. Vladimir Dubrovsky is a brave and determined young man, and Prince Vereisky is an arrogant and unpleasant aristocrat.” A small report on the Battle of Borodino took 1.5 minutes from the neural network …

In the meantime, experts are arguing about what the use of artificial intelligence in the preparation of lessons means – “good old cheating” or a new level in the assimilation of school knowledge, teachers … are dozing. Most people have never even heard of chatbots. Perhaps now only the youngest and most advanced representatives of the teaching staff have considered and noticed the problem.

“Yes, I can see who wrote the essay himself, and who ripped off the neural network,” says Larisa Potryasova, a teacher of Russian language and literature from Moscow. “Still, bots don’t write like people do. The text is unemotional, the phrases are all rounded, there are not enough facts – a lot of descriptiveness. There are other signs by which I determine that the text was composed by a machine. Of course, it’s easier to understand this in high school – they just copy and don’t bother. High school students are smarter: they insert a couple of their phrases. In general, you know, we probably got lucky somewhere. The Russian language is very contextual, there are many phraseological units, idioms, difficult spellings. We have a lot of “irregularities” in the language, which is contrary to the principles of AI. Therefore, “difficulties in translation” are clearly visible. As well as from English to Russian, and from machine to human.

However, not everyone shares this optimism. At the end of December last year, journalists from a leading New York publication conducted an experiment. Using a chatbot, they created essays and reports for students of all ages, from four-year-olds to university students. And then they asked the teachers to check them. No one suspected a trick. Maybe that’s why it was in New York that neural networks were completely banned for use in all schools, in private ones too. Their use on internal networks now requires special permission. But you can’t install “jammers” at home …

However, there is a third point of view in the teaching community. Do not ban or ban bots, but use them yourself. For example, in the preparation of lesson plans or materials for “Talk about important”… The electronic assistant can be called upon to clarify some information, quick examples or search for tasks, compose structured messages, or even for classroom entertainment. After all, a bot can also write poetry and music. You can argue with the chat, discuss. Among the programs with artificial intelligence, there is one where you can find a synonymous definition for anything. Very funny, she “misinterprets” Russian phraseological units. There is also an adapter program that will simplify any cumbersome definition that textbooks sin, translate it into a more understandable language.

What else can a neural network offer a school?

“Neural networks can be used to automatically check assignments, which will help the teacher reduce the time for checking and improve learning efficiency. They can help the teacher to tailor teaching to the individual needs of the students, which will increase the effectiveness of the teaching. They can analyze student performance, which will help the teacher to identify problem areas and take measures to eliminate them. Analyze data, such as test scores or surveys, to help the teacher understand which teaching methods work best. Create interactive lessons that will be more engaging and interesting for students.”

This answer was generated by a chatbot…