Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Thought Experiment: What Are the Ethical
Implications of a Robo-Grader?
Will asked students to consider whether they would want their essays
automatically graded by an underlying computer algorithm, and what
the ethical implications of automated grading would be. Here are some
of their thoughts.
Human graders aren't always fair.
In the case of doctors, there have been studies where a given doctor
is shown the same slide two months apart and gives different di‐
agnoses. We aren't consistent ourselves, even if we think we are.
Let's keep that in mind when we talk about the “fairness” of using
machine learning algorithms in tricky situations. Machine learn‐
ing has been used to research cancer, where the stakes are much
higher, although there's probably less effort in gaming them.
Are machines making things more structured, and is this inhibiting
creativity?
Some might argue that people
want
things to be standardized. (It
also depends on how much you really care about your grade.) It
gives us a consistency that we like. People don't want artistic cars,
for example; they want safe cars. Even so, is it wise to move from
the human to the machine version of same thing for any given
thing? Is there a universal answer or is it a case-by-case kind of
question?
Is the goal of a test to write a good essay or to do well in a standar‐
dized test?
If the latter, you may as well consider a test like a screening: you
follow the instructions, and you get a grade depending on how
well you follow instructions. Also, the real profit center for stand‐
ardized testing is, arguably, to sell topics to tell you how to take
the tests. How does that translate here? One possible way it could
translate would be to have algorithms that game the grader algo‐
rithms, by building essays that are graded well but are not written
by hand. Then we could see education as turning into a war of
machines, between the algorithms the students have and the al‐
gorithms the teachers have. We'd probably bet on the students in
this war.
