ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, has had the internet in a frenzy since it launched in November.

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• Two philosopher professors said they caught their students submitting essays written by ChatGPT.
• They said certain red flags alerted them to the use of AI.
• If students don’t confess to using the program, professors say it can be hard to prove.

A few weeks after the launch of the AI chatbot ChatGPT, Darren Hick, a philosophy professor at Furman University, said he caught a student turning in an AI-generated essay. 

Hick said he grew suspicious when the student turned in an on-topic essay that included some well-written misinformation.

After running it through Open AI’s ChatGPT detector, the results said it was 99% likely the essay had been AI-generated. 

Antony Aumann, a religious studies and philosophy professor at Fordham University, told Insider he had caught two students submitting essays written by ChatGPT.

After the writing style set off alarm bells, Aumann submitted them back to the chatbot asking how likely it was that they were written by the program. When the chatbot said it was 99% sure the essays were written by ChatGPT, he forwarded the results to the students.

Both Hick and Aumann said they confronted their students, all of whom eventually confessed to the infraction. Hick’s student failed the class and Aumann had his students rewrite the essays from scratch.

‘It was really well-written wrong’

There were certain red flags in the essays that alerted the professors to the use of AI. Hick said the essay he found referenced several facts not mentioned in class, and made one nonsensical claim. 

“Word by word it was a well-written essay,” he said, but on closer inspection, one claim about the prolific philosopher, David Hume “made no sense” and was “just flatly wrong.”

“Really well-written wrong was the biggest red flag,” he said.

For Aumann, the chatbot just wrote too perfectly. “I think the chat writes better than 95% of my students could ever,” he said. 

“All of a sudden you have someone who does not demonstrate the ability to think or write at that level, writing something that follows all the requirements perfectly with sophisticated grammar and complicated thoughts that are directly related to the prompt for the essay,” he said.

Christopher Bartel, a professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University, said that while the grammar in AI-generated essays is almost perfect, the substance tends to lack detail.

He said: “They are really fluffy. There’s no context, there’s no depth or insight.”

Hard-to-prove plagiarism  

If students don’t confess to using AI for essays, it can leave academics in a tough spot.

Bartel said that some institutions’ rules haven’t evolved to combat this kind of cheating. If a student decided to dig their heels in and deny the use of AI, it can be difficult to prove. 

Bartel said the AI detectors on offer were “good but not perfect.” 

“They give a statistical analysis of how likely the text is to be AI-generated, so that leaves us in a difficult position if our policies are designed so that we have to have definitive and demonstrable proof that the essay is a fake,” he said. “If it comes back with a 95% likelihood that the essay is AI generated, there’s still a 5% chance that it wasn’t.” 

In Hick’s case, although the detection site said it was “99% certain” the essay had been generated by an AI, he said it wasn’t enough for him without a confession.

“The confession was important because everything else looks like circumstantial evidence,” he said. “With AI-generated content, there is no material evidence, and material evidence has a lot more weight to it than circumstantial evidence.”

Aumann said although he thought the analysis by the chatbot would be good enough proof for disciplinary action, AI plagiarism was still a new challenge for colleges.

He said: “Unlike plagiarism cases of old where you can just say, ‘hey, here’s the paragraph from Wikipedia.’ There is no knockdown proof that you can provide other than the chat says that’s the statistical likelihood.”

A Russian missile attack hit critical infrastructure in Kyiv on Saturday morning and explosions rang out in the Dniprovskiy district of the Ukrainian capital, a senior presidential official and other officials said.

* Russia said on Friday its forces had taken control of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, in what would be a rare success for Moscow after months of battlefield reverses, but Kyiv said its troops were still fighting in the town.

* President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces continued to fight in Soledar, a small salt-mining town, and other cities in the Donetsk region.

* Reuters could not verify the accounts.

* Finland joined Poland in saying it could send German-made Leopard tanks to Ukraine as part of a Western coalition apparently being put together to supply them.

* France hopes to deliver “AMX 10-RC” light combat tanks to Ukraine in two months, said armed forces minister Sebastien Lecornu.

* Belarus may enter the conflict, a Russian foreign ministry official said. Russia used Belarus as a springboard to invade Ukraine in February, but the border area is now heavily waterlogged, making an imminent attack from there unlikely.

* Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, after meeting U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday, stressed the importance of standing up to Russia’s invasion, saying that if a unilateral change to the status quo went unchallenged, the same would happen elsewhere, including in Asia – an apparent reference to China’s vow to reunite with self-ruled Taiwan, by force if necessary.

* Russia is becoming too dependent on oil revenues to support its budget as it ramps up military spending, economists said, warning that the government may have to raise taxes if crude prices fail to meet expectations this year.

* A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested confiscating property and assets of Russians who discredit the armed forces and oppose the war in Ukraine.

* At least four Chinese-owned supertankers are shipping Russian Urals crude to China, according to trading sources and tracking data, as Moscow seeks vessels for exports after a G7 oil price cap restricted the use of Western cargo services and insurance.

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Time is of the essence, as Putin prepares to mobilize another 500,000 soldiers, in addition to the 300,000 called up in October.

A Russian missile attack hit critical infrastructure in Kyiv on Saturday morning and explosions rang out in the Dniprovskiy district of the Ukrainian capital, a senior presidential official and other officials said.

Reuters journalists heard a series of explosions in Kyiv before an air raid siren sounded in Kyiv. Officials told residents to take shelter.

“Missile attack on critical infrastructure facilities. Details are being checked,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office.

Kyiv’s military administration said an infrastructure facility had been hit, but did not say which.

“Explosions in Dniprovskiy district. All agencies heading to the site. Stay in your shelters!” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.

He said the debris of a missile came down on a non-residential area in the Holosiivskiy district in the west of Kyiv.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s vital energy infrastructure with missiles and drones since October, causing sweeping blackouts and disruptions to central heating and running water as winter bites.

Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, its judiciary reported on Saturday, defying calls from London for his release after he was handed the death sentence on charges of spying for Britain.

Britain, which had declared the case against Alireza Akbari as politically motivated, condemned the execution and said it would not stand unchallenged.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people”.

The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported the execution early on Saturday, without saying when it had taken place. Late on Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had said Iran must not follow through with the sentence – a call echoed by Washington.

“Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death on charges of corruption on earth and extensive action against the country’s internal and external security through espionage for the British government’s intelligence service … was executed,” Mizan said.

The report accused Akbari, arrested in 2019, of receiving payments of 1,805,000 euros, 265,000 pounds, and $50,000 for spying.

In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.

Sunak said on Twitter he was “appalled by the execution”. Cleverly said in a statement it would “not stand unchallenged”. “We will be summoning the Iranian Charge d’Affaires to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions.”

British statements on the case have not addressed the Iranian charge that Akbari spied for Britain.

Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran which authorities blamed at the time on Israel.

In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh.

Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.

Reuters could not establish the authenticity of the state media video and audio, or when or where they were recorded.

Akbari was a close ally of Ali Shamkhani, now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was defence minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy.

Reflecting Iran’s worsening ties with the West, London-Tehran relations have deteriorated in recent months as efforts have stalled to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, to which Britain is a party.

Britain has also been critical of the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on anti-government protests, sparked by the death in custody of a young Iranian-Kurdish woman in September.

A British foreign office minister said on Thursday that Britain was actively considering proscribing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation but has not reached a final decision.

Iran has issued dozens of death sentences as part of the crackdown on the unrest, executing at least four people.

In the audio recording broadcast by BBC Persian, Akbari said he had made false confessions as a result of torture.

“With more than 3,500 hours of torture, psychedelic drugs, and physiological and psychological pressure methods, they took away my will. They drove me to the brink of madness… and forced me to make false confessions by force of arms and death threats,” he said.

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Zheng Yanxiong, head of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong, has been appointed director of China’s Liaison Office in the city, according to a notice by China’s State Council on Saturday.

Zheng replaces Luo Huining as head of head Beijing’s top representative office in Hong Kong.

How Those who Became Russian Speakers Because of Moscow’s Policies of Russification are Reverting to Ukrainian.

An air raid alert is in place in the capital.

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