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A student approached me and asked whether they could connect Claude to Canvas, as they are used to studying with Claude and this would allow them to not change their habits. I don't know what that would look like in detail, but to me it appears that it is going too far?
What does it mean when a thesis supervisor says "You can use GenAI to polish the text, but not for anything else". What are the limits of polishing?
I am highly sceptical of generative AI and don't use it myself, but I know there's a general impression among students that it 'knows everything'. The discussions I have seen have focused on text (logical enough for 'large language models'), and images (many of which are disastrous), but I cannot see how LLMs can reliably do (complex) mathematics where there are many steps to a derivation, some of which are nuanced or require particular systematic techniques, and the final result should be as general as possible. How can I convince students that they will (probably) waste more time using generative AI than working through the difficulties themselves? Or do I have to resign myself to allowing an extra week or more for students to learn for themselves that there really isn't an alternative to putting in the effort and doing the derivation oneself with pen and paper, no matter how hard it is?
I've seen a lot of discussion, mostly in social media and teaching fora, about students using generative AI instead of doing the reading and writing assignments that have been central to university learning. But I've seen little discussion of generative AI in physics or other natural sciences. How worried should I be that some of my students will put their effort into learning to use generative AI rather than learning physics? How good are large language models at physics? And how are things changing as the models are improving?
A master student wants to use AI to generate an image in their thesis. The publisher of the original image does not respond to attempts to contact them, and the student really wants to use this image and says they need it. The image is a photograph of some structure they are discussing in the thesis through a microscope. I do not think generating and using an AI image is right thing to do. What should I do?
I just read a student essay and I am pretty sure that it is AI generated, but I don’t have proof. I know that AI detection software does not work, but I feel like I cannot let students get away with stuff like this!