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ERIC Number: EJ1380950
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-May
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0031-9120
EISSN: EISSN-1361-6552
Available Date: N/A
The Death of the Short-Form Physics Essay in the Coming AI Revolution
Yeadon, Will; Inyang, Oto-Obong; Mizouri, Arin; Peach, Alex; Testrow, Craig P.
Physics Education, v58 n3 Article 035027 May 2023
The latest AI language modules can produce original, high quality full short-form (300-word) Physics essays within seconds. These technologies such as ChatGPT and davinci-003 are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. In this work, we present evidence of AI generated short-form essays achieving First-Class grades on an essay writing assessment from an accredited, current university Physics module. The assessment requires students answer five open-ended questions with a short, 300-word essay each. Fifty AI answers were generated to create ten submissions that were independently marked by five separate markers. The AI generated submissions achieved an average mark of 71 ± 2%, in strong agreement with the current module average of 71 ± 5%. A typical AI submission would therefore most-likely be awarded a First Class, the highest classification available at UK universities. Plagiarism detection software returned a plagiarism score between 2 ± 1% (Grammarly) and 7 ± 2% (TurnitIn). We argue that these results indicate that current natural language processing AI represent a significant threat to the fidelity of short-form essays as an assessment method in Physics courses.
IOP Publishing. 190 North Independence Mall West Suite 601, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 215-627-0880; Fax: 215-627-0879; e-mail: ped@ioppublishing.org; Web site: https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/0031-9120
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (England)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A