You can’t even copy and paste anymore”: New program allows teachers to access a “writing report” that records every word you type
A student warns that a new writing report software could be the “end of AI in college.” Social media users share mixed reactions to the new technology.
What is the writing report software?
In a TikTok with over 2.9 million views, Sawyer (@studywithsawyer) says a new software loads when he pulls up a paper for his college class.
He points to a small blue button in the bottom right corner of the Google Doc that reads, “Watch Writing Report.”
Then, a sped-up video showing Sawyer typing his essay plays on the screen. He suspects that this software would quickly catch copy-and-paste from ChatGPT.
“It’ll show exactly what you started with and then what you wrote to change the text,” he says.
In the top right corner, the software also gives a report on “how natural” or human-like the typing patterns were, using factors like pauses, errors, and effort. The report also shows how long the essay took to write.
I suppose this could work in a monitored environment such as a classroom, but if you’re doing essays from afar (as most are), why couldn’t you simply re-type your Chat response after viewing it on another device or even printing it out? Yes, it’s a lot more typing work than cut-and-paste, but it still allows the less thinking result.
Last November, I started a thread outlining out my ex son in law used generative AI to basically game a psych questionnaire used in a domestic abuse evaluation…totally bamboozling the evaluator, the child custody evaluator and ultimately influencing the judge’s decision in distribution of marital assets (I wrongly imagined the reports had been scrapped before she’d seen it) In the process of trying to discover other examples of this that specifically pertain to divorce/child custody law, I stumbled across other examples…including one (which I posted) of ChatGPT being used in the courts. Interestingly, this discovery of dodgy use of AI got its origins in, basically, the skill set that’s a bit reminiscent of how, say, a 6th grade teacher spots, say, a plagiarized book report…plain ole nowse.
In the family albatross’s case as erudite and well crafted (if a tissue of lies) his personal history was, it just didn’t “read” like him. Among the many complaints leveled at my daughter, she allegedly poured scorn on his writing style…thus inflicting severe emotional and psychological abuse. Yet, here he was, composing a Grand Opus worthy of an Oxford don…complete with mellifluous prose, and with spot on grammar and punctuation (including, but not limited to, the regular use of the Oxford comma!) Closer scrutiny revealed even more aggregious errors…hence the closer look with Grammarly. Likewise some of the legal cases I read…including one from the English courts. A pupil barrister had concocted legal cases in her arguments…that had turned out to be non existent! Discovered when a law clerk noticed incongruous sounding phrases and Americanization (as opposed to Americanisation) of some words.
Caveat:…AI was not used in writing this post. Any flubs, gaffes, typos, and examples of pore speling are all me own!
I understand that - it seems, though, that were you to simply mistype occasionally, take breaks, etc. you could fool it by re-typing the essay viewed on and/or copied from another device.
Again, it’s more work, but if you’re trying to avoid original thinking, it works.
Maybe, in the world of an actual paying job, I’ve seen far too many co-workers spend more time trying to get out of doing work than actually the task at hand would have taken.
Found it! The legal case I mentioned upstream (first article in a series on the topic) I was getting frustrated that the prompts I was using weren’t bring up what I wanted and, lo, just when I was searching for something else…
