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Friday, February 7, 2025
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Student Booted from PhD Program Over AI Use (Derek Newton/The Cheat Sheet)
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This one is going to take a hot minute to dissect. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) has the story.
all four faculty graders of his exam expressed “significant concerns” that it was not written in his voice. They noted answers that seemed irrelevant or involved subjects not covered in coursework. Two instructors then generated their own responses in ChatGPT to compare against his and submitted those as evidence against Yang. At the resulting disciplinary hearing, Yang says those professors also shared results from AI detection software.
denies using AI for this exam and says the professors have a flawed approach to determining whether AI was used. He said methods used to detect AI are known to be unreliable and biased, particularly against people whose first language isn’t English. Yang grew up speaking Southern Min, a Chinese dialect.
His academic advisor Bryan Dowd spoke in Yang’s defense at the November hearing, telling panelists that expulsion, effectively a deportation, was “an odd punishment for something that is as difficult to establish as a correspondence between ChatGPT and a student’s answer.”
Dowd is a professor in health policy and management with over 40 years of teaching at the U of M. He told MPR News he lets students in his courses use generative AI because, in his opinion, it’s impossible to prevent or detect AI use. Dowd himself has never used ChatGPT, but he relies on Microsoft Word’s auto-correction and search engines like Google Scholar and finds those comparable.
“I think he’s quite an excellent student. He’s certainly, I think, one of the best-read students I’ve ever encountered”
an eight-hour preliminary exam that Yang took online. Instructions he shared show the exam was open-book, meaning test takers could use notes, papers and textbooks, but AI was explicitly prohibited.Exam graders argued the AI use was obvious enough. Yang disagrees.Weeks after the exam, associate professor Ezra Golberstein submitted a complaint to the U of M saying the four faculty reviewers agreed that Yang’s exam was not in his voice and recommending he be dismissed from the program. Yang had been in at least one class with all of them, so they compared his responses against two other writing samples.
Yang also objects to professors using AI detection software to make their case at the November hearing.He shared the U of M’s presentation showing findings from running his writing through GPTZero, which purports to determine the percentage of writing done by AI. The software was highly confident a human wrote Yang’s writing sample from two years ago. It was uncertain about his exam responses from August, assigning 89 percent probability of AI having generated his answer to one question and 19 percent probability for another.“Imagine the AI detector can claim that their accuracy rate is 99%. What does it mean?” asked Yang, who argued that the error rate could unfairly tarnish a student who didn’t use AI to do the work.
Yang suggests the U of M may have had an unjust motive to kick him out. When prompted, he shared documentation of at least three other instances of accusations raised by others against him that did not result in disciplinary action but that he thinks may have factored in his expulsion.He does not include this concern in his lawsuits. These allegations are also not explicitly listed as factors in the complaint against him, nor letters explaining the decision to expel Yang or rejecting his appeal. But one incident was mentioned at his hearing: in October 2023, Yang had been suspected of using AI on a homework assignment for a graduate-level course.In a written statement shared with panelists, associate professor Susan Mason said Yang had turned in an assignment where he wrote “re write it, make it more casual, like a foreign student write but no ai.” She recorded the Zoom meeting where she said Yang denied using AI and told her he uses ChatGPT to check his English.She asked if he had a problem with people believing his writing was too formal and said he responded that he meant his answer was too long and he wanted ChatGPT to shorten it. “I did not find this explanation convincing,” she wrote.
“re write it, make it more casual, like a foreign student write but no ai.”
the Office of Community Standards sent Yang a letter warning that the case was dropped but it may be taken into consideration on any future violations.
But the range of evidence was sufficient for the U of M. In the final ruling, the panel — comprised of several professors and graduate students from other departments — said they trusted the professors’ ability to identify AI-generated papers.
“PhD research is, by definition, exploring new ideas and often involves development of new methods. There are many opportunities for an individual to falsify data and/or analysis of data. Consequently, the academy has no tolerance for academic dishonesty in PhD programs or among faculty. A finding of dishonesty not only casts doubt on the veracity of everything that the individual has done or will do in the future, it also causes the broader community to distrust the discipline as a whole.”
Computer science researchers say detection software can have significant margins of error in finding instances of AI-generated text. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, shut down its own detection tool last year citing a “low rate of accuracy.” Reports suggest AI detectors have misclassified work by non-native English writers, neurodivergent students and people who use tools like Grammarly or Microsoft Editor to improve their writing.“As an educator, one has to also think about the anxiety that students might develop,” said Manjeet Rege, a University of St. Thomas professor who has studied machine learning for more than two decades.
it’s important to find the balance between academic integrity and embracing AI innovation. But rather than relying on AI detection software, he advocates for evaluating students by designing assignments hard for AI to complete — like personal reflections, project-based learnings, oral presentations — or integrating AI into the instructions.
she and many other students live in fear of AI detection software.“AI and its lack of dependability for detection of itself could be the difference between a degree and going home,” she said.
In the 2023-24 school year, the University of Minnesota found 188 students responsible of scholastic dishonesty because of AI use, reflecting about half of all confirmed cases of dishonesty on the Twin Cities campus.
found his life in disarray. He said he would lose access to datasets essential for his dissertation and other projects he was working on with his U of M account, and was forced to leave research responsibilities to others at short notice. He fears how this will impact his academic career
“Probably I should think to do something, selling potatoes on the streets or something else,” he said.
Monday, January 20, 2025
Ambow Education Continues to Fish in Murky Waters
In May 2022, The Higher Education Inquirer began investigating Ambow Education after we received credible tips about the company as a bad actor in US higher education, particularly with its failure to adequately maintain and operate Bay State College in Boston. The Massachusetts Attorney General had already stepped in and fined the school in 2020 for misleading students.
As HEI dug deeper, we found that Ambow failed years before under questionable circumstances. And we worked with a number of news outlets and staffers in the offices of Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley to get justice for the students at Bay State College.
Murky Waters
Since that 2022 story we continued to investigate Ambow Education, its CEO/CFO/Board Chair Jin Huang, and Ambow's opaque business practices. Not only were we concerned about the company's finances, we were wary of any undue influence the People's Republic of China (PRC) had on Ambow, which the company had previously acknowledged in SEC documents.
A Chinese proverb says it's easier to fish in murky waters. And that's what it seemed like for us to investigate Ambow, a company that used the murky waters in American business as well as anyone. But not everything can remain hidden to US authorities, even if the company was based out of the Cayman Islands, with a corporate headquarters in Beijing.
In November 2022, Ambow sold all of its assets in the People's Republic of China, and in August 2023 Bay State College closed abruptly. We reported some strange behaviors in the markets to the Securities and Exchange Commission, but they had nothing to tell us. Ambow moved its headquarters to a small rental space in Cupertino, where it still operates.
HybriU
In 2024, Ambow began spinning its yarns about a new learning platform, HybriU, using Norm Algood of Synergis Education as its huckster. HybriU appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and at the ASU-GSV conference in San Diego and used their presence as signs of legitimacy. It later reported a $1.3 million contract with a small company out of Singapore. Doing a reverse image search, we found that some of the images on the HybriU website were stock photos.
There is no indication that HybriU's OOOK technology, first promoted in the PRC in 2021, is groundbreaking, although glowing press releases counter that. HybriU says that its technology is being used in classrooms, but no clients (schools or businesses) have been mentioned. If Ambow Education can prove the HybriU technology is promising and valuable to consumers, we will publicy acknowledge it.
Continued PRC Interests
Besides having an auditor from the People's Republic of China, Ambow has apparently shown an interest in working with Chinese interests in Morocco and Tunisia.
Ambow Education's Financial Health
In 2025, Ambow Education remains alive but with fewer assets and only the promise of doing something of value with those assets. Its remaining US college, the NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego has seen its enrollment dip to 280 students. And there are at least three cases in San Diego Superior Court pending (for failure to pay rent and failing to pay the school's former President). The US Department of Education has the school under Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM2) for administrative issues. Despite these problems, NewSchool has been given a cleaner bill of health by its regional accreditor, WSCUC, changing the school's Warning status to a Notice of Concern.
A report by Argus Research, which Ambow commissioned, also described Ambow in a generally positive light, despite the fact that Ambow was only spending $100,000 per quarter on Research and Development. That report notes that Prouden, a small accounting firm based in the People's Republic of China is just seeing Ambow Education's books for the first time. In April 2025 we wonder if we'll get adequate information when Ambow reports its 2024 annual earnings, or whether we find just another layer of sludge.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Ambow's HybriU. Is any of this real?
Ambow Education is at it again, pumping up its stock with another edtech business deal. This time, they sent out a press release that a Singapore company called Inspiring Futures has reached a $1.3M deal for licensing Ambow's 3D learning platform HybriU. Shares of AMBO soared more than 200 percent on the news. In April, Ambow appeared at the ASU+GSV conference to pitch its latest technology.
The Ambow Sales Pitch for HybriU
"HybriU's cutting-edge 3D solution includes 3D signal capture, recording, transformation, and remote display capabilities. It supports broadcasting life-sized 3D projections of professors in remote classrooms via a 3D LED wall, enabling a highly immersive learning experience. Learners can engage in their native language while interacting with the 3D content, making the platform accessible and effective across diverse linguistic and regional boundaries."
Inspiring Futures, the Singapore company that made the deal with Ambow for licensing HibriU, was created four months ago and employs three people. Its headquarters is in an outlet mall.
Ambow also operates out of a small space in Cupertino, California, after its move from the People's Republic of China. Ambow still owns and operates NewSchool, a real college in San Diego, California, that has been declining in enrollment.