With the graduation season approaching, the class of 2024 college graduates are entering the thesis defense stage one after another. This year, many colleges and universities have issued special notices, clarifying that they will detect the proportion of AI-generated content in graduation projects (theses), and standardize the proportion of AI ghostwriting in papers.
Screenshot source: Official website of the Academic Affairs Office of Tianjin University of Science and Technology
For example, the Academic Affairs Office of Tianjin University of Science and Technology issued a document stipulating that if the results of generative AI detection in undergraduate students' graduation theses exceed 40%, the college will issue a warning and require students to self-check and self-correct. The Undergraduate College of Hubei University issued a notice announcing that it will include the detection of the risk of using generative AI in the review process of undergraduate students' graduation theses.
Screenshot source: The official website of the Undergraduate College of Hubei University
The policies and norms of many colleges and universities for the phenomenon of AI writing papers also confirm that the frequency and breadth of college students' use of AI tools are increasing. Previously, some media launched a questionnaire survey on the use of AI tools for college students across the country, and a total of 7,055 valid questionnaires were collected. According to the survey results, 84.88% of the respondents have used AI tools, of which 16.30% often use AI tools, 57.49% use them occasionally, and 19.43% do not use them at all.
College students can be said to be a large group of people who accept emerging knowledge, and they are also the group most likely to shape the form of knowledge dissemination in the future. Their high acceptance of this new tool also makes people sigh that artificial intelligence is reshaping and transforming the field of education, which seems to be going at a speed higher than people's understanding.
Just as the emergence of search engines has greatly impacted dictionaries, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, the popularity of AI tools is also geometrically improving people's learning and work efficiency from a higher dimension. For example, it can help college students quickly search for materials, organize literature, list outlines, polish manuscripts, etc., so that students can avoid some basic and repetitive work, so that they can have more time and energy to devote to academic innovation.
Xinhua net hair (photo by Sun Kaifang)
However, from the perspective of the language generation mechanism behind such AI products, this is a probabilistic model based on repeated learning and training of existing corpus. It can summarize or condense existing knowledge to answer questions, but it is difficult to create new content. This is contrary to the innovative requirements of academic research, which also determines to some extent that its role in thesis writing is limited. At the same time, the overly intelligent and fast generation of "answers" has also caused some students to have inertia in their thinking, and the phenomenon of direct copying, copying and pasting has appeared.
Therefore, it is very necessary for universities to introduce policies to regulate AI writing papers. This is not only to allow students to clarify the boundaries of AI use and correctly use AI tools to assist learning, but more importantly, it conveys an attitude that while pursuing efficiency with the blessing of technology, it is also necessary to maintain the dignity of academic research and maintain the reverence for knowledge.
College students at graduation ceremonies. Image source: Xinhua News Agency (Reporter: Hu Zhixuan)
In the future, academic research will be a scenario of deep collaboration between humans and AI, and people's creative thinking and AI's data intelligence processing capabilities will form a powerful complement. The norms of universities can be seen as establishing a rational logic for this future academic landscape, ensuring that technology works for people, rather than being held hostage by technology.
With the deep involvement of artificial intelligence in all fields of daily life, how to coexist with new technologies and how to make new technologies work for us are all things that people need to continue to learn. One of the most important abilities for the new generation of talents who have grown up with AI is to harness the thinking and speed of AI. New technologies always bring new challenges, but at the same time, they also come with new opportunities.
(Source: Guangming Daily)