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1. Embed this notice
   Robert von Oliva (naruciakk@ak.kawen.space)'s status on Monday, 17-Aug-2026 21:59:12 JST Robert von Oliva

   • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
   • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)
   @cczona @rysiek A huge problem, at least in academia, is that most of the work is done individually, not in the controlled environment. Simply banning LLMs won't work, because... how are you going to police that? Unless the student is using them very badly, it is quite impossible to detect them. I've seen my colleagues, who are real plagiarsm-busters, failing to do so quite often, and they are really good at that.
   
   What's funny is that these "encouraging" tasks for students are often better in mitigating these problems than the outright LLM ban, because they are made with these limitations in mind
   
   Although my experience comes from teaching science and engineering classes, so maybe in humanities and social sciences people have better tools.
   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 17-Aug-2026 21:59:10 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)

     @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek Seriously? These are solved problems.

     If you want to guard against slop usage, you can ask for visibility into the creation process. This is a common practice for art but works for writing as well.

     But in the bigger picture, what you want is for the writing to actually be coherent and reflect an understanding of some real concepts - something a language model doesn't and can't possess. If you're actually evaluating that, students who are using LLM slop well fare poorly, without the need to categorize it as LLM slop. But if profs/TAs are evaluating student writing on a basis just as shallow as (or even using) an "AI" grader, well, there's your problem.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 17-Aug-2026 22:01:49 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)

     @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek And stepping back even further, grading and treating school as a mill for producing labor for capitalism, rather than a way to empower oneself against it, is the reason this is an issue to begin with.

     If students felt like it was in their interests to actually learn how to learn, rather than to get big number to impress future boss, they wouldn't be self-sabotaging with LLMs.

     The whole system is garbage.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 01:16:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)
     • Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠

     @wronglang @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek And like universities actually need to be publicly funded, not at the mercy of "donations" from people who want them run like capitalist enterprises and churning out young adults racing to be the most appealing white-collar labor to their future bosses.

   • Embed this notice
     Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠ (wronglang@bayes.club)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 01:16:10 JST Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Rich Felker
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)

     @dalias @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek almost like universities might need to hire more educators and pay them reasonably

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 01:38:16 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)
     • Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠

     @wronglang @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek We also have nominally public universities where the state cuts funding proportional to growth in private donations, so that functionally they're not public institutions. 🤬

   • Embed this notice
     Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠ (wronglang@bayes.club)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 01:38:17 JST Krzysztof Sakrejda 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏴‍☠

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Rich Felker
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)

     @dalias @naruciakk @cczona @rysiek amen, although currently US public universities have very weird distortions because they run budgets based on wealthy foreign students who can be charged full tuition and the assumption that grant overhead will fund ongoing expenses... which is not working out so good now that the NIH/NSF are being turned inside out for ideological reasons

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 04:20:13 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Jo - pièce de résistance

     @JoBlakely @rysiek

     Yes! I enjoyed rereading this piece, which I'd half forgotten.

     Speaking as a prof, the secret sauce here — borne out quite strongly by my own experiences with students, with LLMs and otherwise — is that asking students to think about and take ownership of their own learning works wonders.

   • Embed this notice
     Jo - pièce de résistance (joblakely@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 04:20:14 JST Jo - pièce de résistance

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     @rysiek this is fantastic. I love how the whole test was set up. What a great teacher.

   • Embed this notice
     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 04:20:16 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     • ploum
     • Carina C. Zona (is in Berlin)

     @naruciakk @cczona this piece by @ploum is very on topic:
     https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html

   • Embed this notice
     Jo - pièce de résistance (joblakely@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 06:00:15 JST Jo - pièce de résistance

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Paul Cantrell

     @inthehands @rysiek

     The questions he asks demonstrates his own desire to learn too. Everyone learns and improves.

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Aug-2026 06:00:15 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • Jo - pièce de résistance

     @JoBlakely @rysiek

     Yes! An excellent point, well spotted.