Artificial Intelligence | Going to school was revolutionized in one spring – These are the sneaky tricks schoolchildren are now cheating on

This spring a teacher from Kuopio Tomi Nissinen noticed that some students’ written output improved surprisingly.

The joy of the students’ development quickly turned to disappointment, when Nissinen, who teaches life outlook information in middle school, began to suspect that the texts were indeed produced by artificial intelligence.

Nissinen was recently published in Helsingin Sanomat opinion piece, in which he insisted that the rules of the game for the use of artificial intelligence must be drawn up in schools. Nissinen also wished for training in artificial intelligence for teachers.

Also a mother tongue teacher from Oulu Jessi Jokelainen discovered at the turn of the year that some of his students had discovered the Chat GPT AI.

When Jokelainen gave his students presentations or information retrieval tasks, some of the tasks were completed amazingly quickly. However, the text was not typical for the students, and there could be glaring factual errors.

“For example, it could be argued that Anna-Leena Härkönen has written the work You can’t rape a man“, Jokelainen says.

You can’t rape a man Märta Tikkanen novel.

Chat GPT AI program has been trained with a huge amount of information, but the Finnish version still has shortcomings. For now, a lot depends on how reliable the information provided by artificial intelligence is.

If there are no rules of the game, it may also be unclear to students why, for example, Googling is allowed, but the use of artificial intelligence is not.

“On some topics, artificial intelligence can already produce information that is completely correct, but if the student does not have to search for answers from different sources and produce text on their own, the learning process will be lacking,” says Tomi Nissinen.

So far, Nissinen has come across only a few cases where he has suspected artificial intelligence as the producer of the text instead of the student. However, Jessi Jokelainen has already received dozens of cases. During the spring, according to Jokelainen, the situation literally “exploded”.

“Students should have already started to be reminded that directly copying text produced by artificial intelligence is plagiarism and automatically leads to rejection,” says Jokelainen.

Nissinen and Jokelainen are not the only teachers who have had trouble with artificial intelligence. According to them, the matter has been discussed a lot recently on the teachers’ own forums.

Also the head of the education policy of the teachers’ union OAJ Jaakko Salo says that artificial intelligence is now making teachers think a lot.

However, according to Salo, the phenomenon is so recent that it has only been noticed in schools this past spring. Common rules have not been created yet.

Also, there are still big differences in the knowledge and skills of both students and teachers regarding artificial intelligence. Some use artificial intelligence already, some haven’t even tried it yet.

So far, teachers’ competence has largely depended on their own activity, as training on artificial intelligence has only been offered to teachers in very few schools.

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“Artificial intelligence is not going anywhere, and the school cannot ignore the development of the rest of society.”

Jaakko Salon according to Finland, the basic training of teachers is of a high standard, but there is room for improvement in the organization of continuing education.

“Definitely this is now something where teachers needed training quickly. Artificial intelligence is not going anywhere, and the school cannot ignore the development of the rest of society.”

In some schools, attempts have been made to stop fraudulent companies by returning to old operating models. For example, work or tests that affect the evaluation were no longer allowed to be completed independently, but had to be done in the classroom. Or, instead of using a computer, the tasks should have been done with a pen on paper.

However, Salo sees this as a bit of a step backwards.

“At best, digitalization is a natural part of the school. Teachers should have the skills to take advantage of the possibilities of artificial intelligence in their work, as well as to prevent the disadvantages arising from it.”

Tomi Nissinen has not yet had time to receive artificial intelligence training from his employer, but who works as a digitizer of basic education in the city of Kuopio Henrikki Kattainen has, however, toured the city’s middle schools during the spring, introducing teachers to the secrets of artificial intelligence.

Kattainen says that “very basic things” have been discussed with the teachers, such as what artificial intelligence is and what it can do.

According to Kattainen, teachers’ attitude towards artificial intelligence has been varied. Some are very interested in its possibilities, some still want to see if it’s just a passing fad or something that really needs to be taken over.

“Some may also feel tired: oh no, another new thing that needs to be learned just after we got over the corona and the challenges of distance education.”

Hot topic of course, the trainings have also included how the teacher can recognize whether the text is produced by the student himself or by artificial intelligence.

“It can be really difficult,” says Kattainen.

According to Kattainen, teachers mostly know their students well and can recognize if the text suddenly deviates a lot from the student’s previous level or style. However, you can ask artificial intelligence to “deteriorate” the text, for example by adding compound words or grammatical errors.

“Some young people can be quite clever at this, and the tips spread quickly on the students’ own social media channels.”

Teachers have used tools that identify if the text is plagiarized from the Internet. However, these tools do not recognize text produced by artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence can only grant a request by slightly varying many different outcomes from the same issue, in which case the students’ answers can be different from each other even if the whole class has resorted to artificial intelligence.

In his opinion piece, Tomi Nissinen expressed his concern that the teacher’s means of showing the student’s coolness may be limited.

In this regard, Kattainen has advised teachers that if they start to doubt a student’s use of artificial intelligence, the student can be asked, for example, to open up what he wrote in more detail or to explain the matter again in his own words.

“Then if the student can do that, some learning has probably taken place, even if the text is produced by artificial intelligence.”

In Henrikki Kattainen’s opinion, teachers should now think about how artificial intelligence can be used in teaching, because he does not believe that it can be completely prevented from being used.

For example, the teacher can give permission to use artificial intelligence, but remind the students that the facts must be correct and they must be checked from other sources as well.

“In this kind of process, you could imagine learning already taking place.”

Tomi Nissinen has thought that next fall he will already allow his students to use artificial intelligence, but then the assignments must be more complicated so that the students themselves have to experience trouble.

“However, it still puts students in an unequal position at this stage, because not everyone knows how to use artificial intelligence yet,” Nissinen says.

In Jessi Jokelainen’s opinion, in addition to teachers, students now also need to learn about artificial intelligence. From Jokelainen, the spread of artificial intelligence further emphasizes the importance of media literacy.

“Children or young people do not yet have the skills to recognize whether a text produced by artificial intelligence contains errors or even completely false information,” says Jokelainen.

Henrikki from Kattainen artificial intelligence should be approached in schools first of all realistically: recognizing its possibilities and problems.

At best, artificial intelligence can also be useful for teachers, and they themselves can rely on its help, for example, in preparing assignments.

“In no case can the school ignore this phenomenon. However, students are taught for this society, not for the school.”