Recently an academic article on AI chatbots and there increasing use  by students to write essays highlighted the difficulty of detecting their use. The article was all the more convincing when it was revealed that despite being peer reviewed by four academics prior to publication it was in fact written by a Chatbot.  The advice to lecturers trying to identifying this form of cheating was, “know your student and look for their voice in their essay. “

Interestingly it was noted that spelling and grammar were often better than that of the genuine student. So no doubt students using chatbots will throw in the odd spelling mistake and getting there and their or you’re and your wrong to throw off suspicion. Another clued that an academic paper has been written by a Chatbot is the failure to properly use references or even make up references but then that is also a frequent criticism of students.

The implications seem to be that university courses should put less emphases  on essays and perhaps look more to presentations which after all are a common practice in business and thus a useful skill for a student to obtain. Most interviews for management posts involve a presentation and follow up questions the popularity of this approach would indicate it is considered to have merit.

If it’s increasingly hard to tell a piece written by a Chatbot from one written by a human then humans need to write more like humans. Can a Chatbot do irony and sarcasm? A Chatbot can repeat a funny story but can it make up a joke? A Chatbot can’t write from personal experience so an article won’t have the detail or human nuance unless of course it has been feed a lot of good fiction. Can an  AI Chatbot convey powerful emotions? Could an AI Chatbot have written President Obama’s “ Yes we can “ speech?

In the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner it’s almost impossible to tell a replicant from a human. There are two key differences one is the lack of an emotional reaction to a certain question the other is childhood memories which replicants don’t have as they are created fully formed. However the film then reveals that a special replicant has been given the childhood  memories of someone else and does not realise she isn’t human.

So far any way human emotions and creativity are what separates us from AI but for how long?