Lumpy Steak Smoothie

AI Writing

by Amy E. Barr with The Lukeion Project

The Lukeion Project has a zero AI usage policy meaning students who turn in AI work represented as their own work will have a bad day indeed. There’s a relatively new term for people that turn in AI work as their own: they are meat proxies. If you are a meat proxy, you turned in AI output without reading, understanding, or validating that work, existing as just a relay between the AI system and the intended recipient. You did less than nothing in that transfer of work, which is a big problem.  

Turning in stolen work is always bad. In the academic world, it is called plagiarism, a word which comes from Latin plagiarius, meaning "kidnapper". Having AI do your writing is even worse than normal theft or kidnapping because you were just a mindless relay who didn’t even bother to take the necessary steps of gluing together a few thoughts. Your mental acuity is diminished but so is your educator’s because you’ve asked them to read and “grade” the whole charade.

When the topic of AI writing comes up among students, they often mistakenly believe one “gets caught” using AI writing because their essay is just so very good! Sorry, but no this is not the case at all. Your educators don’t grow suspicious that you are a meat proxy because your writing is deeply transformative and profound. There is a very specific quality in things written by AI. People that read student work for a living can pick out those clues as easily as one finds a six-fingered person in an AI image.

AI writing has the literary qualities of a department store dummy. Everyone can tell a mannequin is supposed to represent something human wearing the appropriate clothes, but all the uniqueness and humanity visible on that chunk of plastic is perfectly midway between good and bad, thoughtful and mindless, interesting and bland. AI writing isn’t good writing. It is bland writing. If you have a delicious steak dinner with asparagus, mashed potatoes, plus apple pie, that tasty meal will leave you happy all night. If you take that same nice meal and shove it into a high-powered blender for three minutes, you’ll have a disgusting smoothie made of perfectly fine ingredients. You might still be able to consume it, but it will not be pleasant.

Some AI models have tried to outwit educators who quickly pick up on that perfectly bland, albeit grammatically correct work. Students intentionally add typical errors and a few mangled thoughts to make it all seem more human. Great. Thanks. Now the steak smoothie has mystery lumps! Your educators don’t want to swallow that either.  

Faculty now as a matter of normal practice always run written pieces through a couple different AI detector apps. We all know these are not foolproof tests but it’s a start. If your written work comes back as VERY suspicious, we run it through more checkers, online searches, and our fellow educators. If the results are still highly suspicious. You will have a bad day indeed.

Some essays come back as “maybe AI.” Again we have to do more checking and comparing. It is a lot of extra work thanks to AI. Whether your work came across as likely or maybe AI, there’s one thing YOU can do to help yourself in situations where others must grade your work. You can provide all the evidence we need to conclude you are innocent…at least until AI comes up with a new way to outsmart this technique.

If you use MSWord (or the free version by Google) you can turn on “Track Changes” before you begin writing your paper or essay. Once you turn this setting on, any changes that you make to your paper--including any edits, copy/paste, deletions, or just regular typing and spell-checking--will all show up and can be examined by your educator. If you are mainly copying and pasting long bits into your paper instead of writing, correcting, adjusting, editing (all the normal stuff), then our suspicions are confirmed. If your work looks like the fairly normal process of writing, editing, deleting, rewriting, we can all relax.

How does one turn this on? Check for yourself if you use Google. I use MSWord. You can open a new document then navigate to the Review tab (look for the “review” tab in the toolbar at the top of the window) and then select “Track Changes.” The icon looks like a pencil and paper. Any time you make any changes, it will track them. Now evidence of a real human doing real writing is handy and available if and when needed.

If you use this technique and are ever accused of using AI by anyone grading your work, you have the right evidence to prove you completed the task for yourself and also the proof that allows us to restore faith in your work as a student.

Unfortunately, in the years ahead education will continue to be in turmoil thanks to AI. While you may have some educators who encourage the use of AI, you will have an even larger percentage that want you develop your ability to read, analyze, and write while you still have the opportunity and luxury to do so. Outside of brick-and-mortar classrooms requiring hand-written in-class essays, we will all be burdened with the need to verify that only a truly human composition sits in front of us for a real grade.