r/mildlyinfuriating • u/relaqz • 9h ago

ಠ_ಠ Caught our exam grader pasting every essay into ChatGPT

Not a single word was read per grade.

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u/Ecstatic_Pick7321 9h ago

Hes probably not even getting paid 😂

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u/Beginning-Fig-9089 meaty oaker 9h ago

i was going to say hes probably getting like $5/hr and is expected to grade all of them by 11:59. aint no way in hell hes going to read them word for word and give a real grade lmao

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u/ADeadWeirdCarnie 9h ago edited 8h ago

Everybody's talking about people using LLMs as a crutch, but no one's talking about society breaking people's legs.

If you're trained from birth to believe that the purpose of all human endeavor is simply to get as much done in as little time as possible, then yeah, you're pretty likely to start cutting corners instead of working harder and harder for lesser rewards.

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u/SnausageFest 6h ago

Not to mention, C-suites idea of what productivity looks like with AI is generally very different from the actual output.

I have this conversation with my boss a truly maddening amount. "How is your team using AI to automate their work???" They're not, because we have no tools or budget to invest. "Well what are you building to use AI to automate their tasks???" We aren't. We work in compliance. We don't code. "You need to start using AI!" Okay, where's my budget for software? To hire a dev? Is the completely closed platform product we work in introducing any sort of API we can connect to? No on all fronts? Got it chief. Looking forward to having this same conversation in two weeks.

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u/FakeSafeWord 4h ago

"Hey build us a chat bot that only answers specific work related questions."

Okay I can build a RAG... what am I building it with?

"AI..."

Okay but we either need the hardware in house and I can grab some free model or we need to pay for a platform that I can build a RAG within...

"Just use Copilot"

Gross but okay I need a workspace, repository, access to build things, premium priced access and a token budget.

"Why do you need all of that, everyone already has copilot"

Because I need to build a custom setup, otherwise why aren't they just using copilot to answer their questions?

"Because it doesn't know about that stuff. That's our work stuff."

Right... so... I... have... to... build... that.

"Okay. I'll look into it."

3 weeks later.

"What's the status of that chat bot."

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u/im_just_thinking 8h ago

Can't wait for society to be parented by AI, taught in schools by AI, submit their AI done homework to be graded by AI, then use AI to enter college to keep doing that until one day they can graduate and get a job like this. Makes you wonder how AI companies are able to grow so much while bringing in the opposite of profit

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u/ADeadWeirdCarnie 8h ago

Because the venture capitalists are looking forward to the day when everyone is so reliant on technology for every individual facet of life that they'll pay any price in order to keep the servers running.

The society you're describing is one in which human beings and computers have literally switched places, so that LLMs are performing all the mental labor while human beings are reduced to automata, functioning only to perform assigned tasks and facilitate the transfer of money.

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u/pleasedothenerdful 7h ago

And because how they'll continue quarterly growth once they literally have all the fucking money instead of 99% of it is the only problem they're actually interested in having to solve.

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u/dontnation 6h ago

Problem is you can't have a 100% service economy, you ultimately have to actually create tangible things at some level, food, energy, materials.

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u/manluther 5h ago edited 4h ago

We already are reliant on technology for everyday life. Could you function without a computer, a car, HVAC, refrigeration? A smartphone is already a external organ.

We are past that point already.

Also, robotics are getting really good, too. Your apocryphal future might not even need human labor. We use drones and bombs for warfare now, as an example.

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u/VoluptuousGinger 8h ago

Its already being used in schools.. imagine my surprise when my kindergartener brought home a reading assessment that I looked into further, only to find out its an AI they have the kids read to thay records them.

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u/hixchem 7h ago

This is my nightmare scenario and I will absolutely make myself into A Problem for my kids' school if they pull that shit.

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u/fogleaf 5h ago

When I ask my son about his day nothing happened, so I don't think he's going to notice that he's talking to AI and be able to repeat it to me for me to ask the teacher what the fuck.

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u/im_just_thinking 7h ago

It's all fun and games until the AI gets into the hands of batshit crazy bazillionaires that want to control the world! Oh wait..

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u/dingdongler55 6h ago

I mean if AI can get me out of work faster so I can be with my kids then that is a win in my book. I would prefer to parent.

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u/I_argue_for_funsies 6h ago

AI teddy bears that interact, listen, and record memories are on their way. It will be sold as a living vault because "wouldn't you love to see what you did when you were 5 years old on October 20th?".

Ppl will buy them as gifts, kids will grow up with these things, and be completely normalized to it.

Like these bank accounts that parents set up that attach chore lists. Johnny took the garbage out, he gets $5!

Picture how the govt will use this when he's 20 years old. "Fill out your tax return and get $15 bank bucks".

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u/Krazyguy75 2h ago

Makes you wonder how AI companies are able to grow so much while bringing in the opposite of profit

Because they use Hollywood accounting.

People don't like to hear it, but if you actually look at the numbers, AI is incredibly profitable; what isn't profitable is training AI.

They lose money because they spend billions on training better and better AI models with more and more data. If they stopped the training side of things, they'd make a ton of money.

It's the same kinda thing as those big box stores that report losses every year because they keep using the funds to buy more and more stores, turning profit into reinvestment and pretend that they didn't actually make a ton of taxable money despite the value in real estate and assets going up significantly.

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u/deanb23 33m ago

Look up aleks. It's being used in schools. I know a teacher that tells students to use that software and doesn't even really teach them. Basically just moderates the class. It's a math class.

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u/optimustomtv 6h ago

This is the scariest part because then the things that usually need expertise and finesse now get done by randos with no SME, or shoveled into an AI Agent going through everything lightning speed.

So then instead of having things done early, now the expectation is a task takes 5 minutes to do regardless of difficulty, so it becomes "how much MORE can be done?!" Because companies work in hours and "efficiency" more than accuracy and quality nowadays.

The cutting corners is now directly responsible for adding more to that "get as much done in as little time as possible" by theoretically lowering the time spent so you can increase the things done. Siiiiigh.

Data Analysis has been hit hard by this. AI makes Dashboards in 5 minutes we used to take a couple hours doing - but we verified the info as we went. Couple people I know now have jobs as an "AI Analyst" where their entire role is fixing what the Aai messes up manually and then teaching it what it did wrong. So essentially, they end up saving very little time for so much more of an up front cost. But y'know, the AI finished these things so quickly so they're now verifying 10 Dashboards at once instead of a select few that matter.

Just ranting, but your point hits harder than most people think. The "easy way" is actually creating more work now.

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u/OnyxGow 7h ago

This one hundo. University Professors are unapologetically cruel to their TAs. 1/3 minimum wage pay and an asshat telling you need to finish your job even if its 2am.

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u/asdjk482 2h ago

That's a completely different conversation from whether or not it's appropriate to use chatbots to grade essays.

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u/imisstheyoop 8h ago

"Work smarter, not harder!"

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u/Noslamah 1h ago

We spent multiple generations designing a society that judges your worth as a human being on your ability to be productive. Now, we're about to find out what happens when that kind of society is faced with a technological development that essentially makes their relative worth zero.

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u/fake_somebody 9h ago

Even $5 an hour seems high could be just a small stipend for the semester.

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u/iwishiwasamoose 7h ago

I was an essay grader in undergrad and I got something like $13 per hour. That was 15 years ago.

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u/cjsv7657 7h ago

Similar time ago I was paid ~$22 as a TA. Paid for 10 hours a week, most weeks barely had a couple hours of actual work. A couple had a ton. I still got paid for far more hours than I put in.

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u/spicydak 9h ago

lol. GSIs at my school got $3k a month plus all tuition paid in engineering.

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u/kneb 8h ago

Usually in this situation, there's a rubric and they get points for mentioning X,Y,Z, or correctly explaining how A and B work. If he inserts that rubric into Chat GPT, it can do the same job as the human.

He's not grading for how good the writing or thinking of an original essay is, he's grading a free response essay on a test that's still about understanding and regurgitating info, just without the training wheels of multiple choice.

I hope we can differentiate how an essay that's about writing and expressing personal opinions is different from an essay that's a test of knowledge and one's ability to articulate it.

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u/schizophrenicbugs 8h ago

In today's news:

Lazy person makes excuse for other lazy person to suppress any tingling feelings of self-awareness.

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u/huskers2468 8h ago

It's ok to be lazy at a job. The LLMs allow for the work to be completed.

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u/Flesroy 8h ago

the goal isn't for the work to be completed. a random number generator could grade a bunch of essays too.

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u/huskers2468 8h ago

No, it really couldn't. Though I agree that this job is meant for a person to be in the equation

The comment I replied to was addressing the lazy person who made an excuse for this lazy person. In a regular job, who cares what gets the work done? We are pawns, why make our lives harder?

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u/schizophrenicbugs 6h ago

God forbid you exercise your brain.

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u/huskers2468 6h ago

They don't pay me enough for that

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u/schizophrenicbugs 5h ago

Money shouldn't be your motivation

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u/huskers2468 5h ago

At my job? It's my #1 motivation.

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u/wigsinator [+64] 6h ago

I TA'd a class during my undergrad and was paid $40/hour for a set number of hours per semester.

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u/Crafty-Channel2452 4h ago

He probably doesn’t get paid anything and only obtains some course credits toward his degree. It’s really just a bunch of BS.

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u/illiter-it 9h ago

He's probably getting paid to do research and got stuck with the job of screening papers for bare minimum requirements instead

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u/unExtant 6h ago

Look most of you have no idea what this guy's life is like.

I am not sure but if he's a PhD student/candidate then his life is he's got a full job of doing his PhD to do. He got added to help teach this class and given very little support. He might not even be doing his PhD in the field this class covers.

So for the minimum pay he's receiving he's blasting through the work to get back to his PhD so he can move on with his life.

Is it the best situation. . . No but I would argue it's entirely understandable.

Tldr: Universities exploit students to teach classes and I can't fault this guy for just getting through it

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u/asdjk482 2h ago

None of that has anything to do with whether or not it's appropriate to use chatbots to grade assignments.

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u/Vanishing_Light 32m ago

He might not even be doing his PhD in the field this class covers.

If that's the case, then what business does this guy have grading essays in the first place?

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u/Saritiel 7h ago

Yeah, I've got a buddy who got his Phd and regularly had to do stuff like this while doing it. He said that this kind of work made his life absolute hell since every minute he'd spend grading student papers or essays was a minute he wasn't able to be spending on his Phd research.

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u/modzRtarderz 7h ago

That's not how it works at all. You are either paid as a TA or RA, and the responsibilities do not ever intersect. And it absolutely doesn't make sense to waste an RA's time with grading, though I'm sure in extremely limited circumstances it still happens.

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u/illiter-it 7h ago

I was brought on as an RA, and when our grant ran out my last year I had to TA (not full responsibility , but screening essays and responding to student questions if I could) to get funds to finish out the research portion.

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u/lava172 TANGERINE 7h ago

And it absolutely doesn't make sense to waste an RA's time with grading

This is quite literally the only thing I saw RA's doing pre-covid

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u/tlor180 6h ago

You are both though. One semester you might be paid as a TA, one semester you might be paid as an RA. Your end goal is the same though, publish original research and graduate. You can't graduate through teaching classes. You have to find time for your own research, and it takes up the bulk of your time regardless.

  • a TA currently grading exams

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u/faetpls 7h ago

It’s really common for an RA to do TA work. Not the other way around though.

RAs are assigned to faculty or a research project. Typically the researcher they work under needs someone who can help them research as expected, and with grading and other random tasks. Supposedly to give the researcher more time to research.

TAs are assigned to a course or program.

Same thing with GRAs and GAs. They can end up doing all sorts of random stuff, even admin and front desk work.

Sometimes, especially when it’s a long existing role, they aren’t doing any research but it’s easier for the college to keep the RA position as is and just do something else with them than change the position to TA only to need an RA again a year later. So they eat the small cost difference to not fight with the university over gaining/losing/modifying a position.

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u/manova 5h ago

You still have to do research as a grad student when you are assigned as a TA. RA just means you have more time to do research, but your productivity goals for research do not really change.

We also move students around from TA or RA duties depending on our needs each semester. The only protected RAs are those who are being paid from external funds. The ones paid from departmental funds are assigned as needed.

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u/tobasc0cat 34m ago

Just adding to every other comment you're receiving, I 100% was expected to progress my research the semesters I TAed, and every PhD student in my program was required to TA at least two semesters. Some people in poorly funded labs TAed their entire degree... And still had to research and write a dissertation lol.

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u/Exotic-Slice-5493 9h ago

Usually TAs that are grading assignments are paid. While not universal, that's what is typical

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u/Pandarandr1st 7h ago

I'm pretty sure that is universal. They're getting paid in dollars or a tuition waiver or both.

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u/modzRtarderz 7h ago

Yeah, there literally isn't such a thing as an unpaid TA. That just wouldn't make sense. Though there definitely are still students forced to grade who aren't being paid.

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u/mxzf 6h ago

AFAIK the only time you end up with students grading while being unpaid is in a class where the professor has all the students grade each other's work as a first pass (and, typically, as an exercise in what to look for so you can learn too).

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u/Seethcoomers 9h ago

If this is the US, he's probably getting paid. I TA'd undergrad when I was in Grad school and made $15 an hour plus a partial tuition waiver.

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u/HeyVitK 7h ago edited 7h ago

I was a GTA ( Graduate Teaching Assistant) at a major research university and I didn't get paid by the hour. None of the GTAs did. We got paid a stipend issued by the semester (with payments staggered by a third upfront, third at midpoint, and a third at the end), and a complete tuition waiver. Our stipend paid the remaining student fees and that was it. If family wasn't helping out financially, we worked other jobs and/or took out student loans for cost of living expenses. I taught undergraduate lab courses and graded quizzes, tests, lab reports, and papers. I also was a GRA (Graduate Research Assistant, for a different grad degree I did at a different university private med school), and I was paid hourly for that.

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u/mxzf 6h ago

I mean, everything you're describing is "being paid", even if it's not "being paid enough to cover room and board on top of the education".

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u/welpthishappened1 9h ago

If TAs didn't get compensated nobody would be a TA

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u/StillStaringAtTheSky 9h ago

Sometimes people are required to TA as part of their program. Most grad programs have TAships that will pay you just enough to try to eat- so like $22k/year- but you can't say no because there's 1-2 required years of TAing.

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u/Pandarandr1st 7h ago

Most of those also come with a tuition waiver.

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u/livefreeordont 6h ago

In my program I got 24k/yr with tuition but that didn’t cover the 2k per semester in fees

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u/fespadea 3h ago

That's compensation though.

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u/Ecstatic_Pick7321 9h ago

I knew many who did it basically for free/slave wages just to be apart of project or for letter of rec its not uncommon

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u/Chawp 9h ago

More like if TAs didn’t get compensated nobody would be a grad student. That doesn’t make it pay well. It’s more like, if you want to research something you’re passionate about, you need to accept the pittance and time intensive work they burden you with. Academia is a weird place.

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u/Lord_dokodo 7h ago

That's how most of the world operates. "Newbies" are given the grunt work not because it's suitable for their level of intelligence or work experience but because it's work that HAS to be done yet no one wants to do it. So you push it onto the new guy cause fuck him he doesn't really matter yet.

It's also a shit test to see how willing they are to play by the rules. It's a power play in that regard. Because humans are creatures of rules, culture, and, most importantly, hierarchy. If you don't want to respect the hierarchy, then you don't get to fit in.

It's also why hazing exists in fraternities, sports teams, big finance companies. It's a tradition in a sense that the new guys are given rough treatment because everyone else before them also went through the same experience. Tell people to let go of their traditions and see how well that goes.

And it's not just limited to the traditional sense of "hazing". Even people who abhor fraternities often haze other people who join their new group. Ask anyone whose ever gone skiing with a group of experienced skiers and ask them how they learned how to ski. MANY of them will tell you that they were forced to dive bomb down a green by their buddies and eat shit at the end of it.

Ask a chef what their job was when they first started working in a kitchen. They might have been a "line cook" but they probably were forced to do the shit no one else wanted to do like cleaning dishes after the dish washer left for the evening, taking out trash, and picking up the slack for other jobs when things got rough. I've worked plenty of blue collar jobs when I was younger and this was how pretty much all of them went. The new guy has to do the dirty work because when I was the new guy, I was forced to do the dirty work so you will too.

Ultimately, it probably goes back to some tribalistic mindset that is engrained into our biology. A test to see if someone truly belongs in the "in-group" or if they're just an imposter. A test to see if someone is trustworthy and reliable or if they're "different" and don't belong. Cause we all went through the same shit and came out on the other side. So if this guy can't do it, what's his deal?

Plus people are lazy creatures and if someone else will clean the bathrooms and pick up shit up off the floor, that means I don't have to do it and that is a win.

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u/BidoofSquad 8h ago

Some PhD programs force you to as part of the program. You get paid for the research but still have to TA anyways

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u/illiter-it 9h ago

Yeah that $25k a year was lifechanging

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u/Informal_Bench_7219 8h ago

This is just not true lmao.

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u/urbancrier 8h ago

we also have an issue with some students international status that we can not pay them and they can not get an outside job, but they are also required to have internship to graduate.

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u/headrush46n2 2h ago

they would if its a degree requirement.

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u/Kids_Love_Baseball 9h ago

Depending on the university TA's get some or all of their tuition knocked off

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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick 8h ago

Do they at least validate parking?

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u/OutTop 7h ago

If this is a collage/uni class he should be getting paid pretty well? TAs have Unions right? I know at my uni they make like $50/h

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u/AloneEntertainment5 5h ago

I got paid 18/h in Canada a decade ago for doing similar jobs

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u/AdequateSource 5h ago

I worked as a "teaching assistant", grading papers etc.
It paid US$21/hr and they often overestimated the time we need, so effectively I made closer to 40.

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u/DiscoKittie Short Bus 3h ago

Paid? He's probably just a student TA, they don't get paid, lol.

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u/NormanWu49 2h ago

Don’t do it then tf?

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u/Fire-EyedBoy 2h ago

He’s likely a teaching assistant who receives a living stipend in exchange for research and teaching (and grading). This is very common.

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 44m ago

You know what, I don't give a shit. If you don't want to do your job, paid or unpaid get a different job. I get that people use chatgpt and the likes, but this is a disgrace.

It goes also beyond it, someone is feeding chatgpt more data (I know edu supposedly doesn't harvest your data) and rely on a third party black box on giving feedback?

I hope his superior sees this and throws a boot at him.

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u/CloseToMyActualName 8h ago

TA's actually get reasonable pay, though not so much for their skill set.

But I don't see any issue with running the essays through ChatGPT as part of their marking.

The students shouldn't use ChatGPT to write their essays because they defeats the entire purposes of doing the homework.

But when you get to actually doing work (like the TA is) you're a fool if you don't use LLMs to enhance your own productivity.