And, of course, AI has come for the king of assignments, the essay. Essays are ubiquitous in education, where they serve many purposes, from demonstrating how students think to providing an opportunity for reflection. But they are also really easy for any LLM to generate, and AI-based essays are getting better and better. At first, AI style was conspicuous, but newer models write in a less awkward and circular way and can easily be prompted to write in a style appropriate for a student. Plus, the problem of hallucinated references and obvious errors is now much less common and easy to catch.
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