It is the graduation season of the college entrance examination, and studying abroad has become a hot topic again. Right now, choosing a school and writing an application are top priorities for many students. In this year when AI is in full swing, this old business has undergone new changes.
When students use AI to write applications one after another, study abroad agencies start to reduce their business, intermediaries use AI to write documents to "fool" students, and clerical teachers face unemployment crisis... The tide of AI has hit, and the study abroad intermediary industry has set off a huge wave. Some people even say that machines To challenge human beings, the first to fall may be the study abroad agency.
Spend 30,000 yuan to hire an overseas study agency
The college application is actually the same as the one written by AI
"It's outrageous. My college application might have been written by an AI. It's useless to find an intermediary!" Shen Li, a girl from Jiangsu, yelled "I've been fooled" and sent a series of crying emojis.
Writing English essays for students is an important service for study abroad agencies, including personal statements, resumes, letters of recommendation, etc. The price of general documents is between 2,000 and 5,000 yuan, while some well-known overseas study institutions may charge tens of thousands of yuan, which varies from person to person.
Shen Li is about to enter her senior year and is applying to study in the UK. Compared with many intermediary agencies, she took a fancy to a big agency, and the clerical teachers were all from prestigious schools. Shen Li looked at their products specially, and felt that the writing was good and reliable, so she invited them to do it.
Out of curiosity, Shen Li also used ChatGPT to write an application form, input keywords, and AI quickly typed out an article. Shen Li was dumbfounded when she saw that one of the paragraphs was almost the same as what the agency wrote to her, from sentence structure, word order to content, it was exactly the same.
At first I couldn't believe it, Shen Li used AI plagiarism detection software again, and found that the plagiarism rate of two sections was as high as 80%! The results showed that "there is a high probability that it was created by AI".
"It's really thunderous. I spent 30,000 yuan as an intermediary fee, and just gave me a document written by AI!" Shen Li angrily asked the intermediary for an explanation, but the other party refused to admit it, saying that the duplication check had no scientific basis.
And Shen Li asked other friends studying abroad to go to the AI to check the duplicates, and the duplicate check rate of their documents was below 1%.
The application season is about to enter, and Xiao Weng, a college student in Hangzhou, is also struggling. He asked an intermediary to apply to several Hong Kong schools. He wanted to add one, so he asked ChatGPT to write an application letter. He was surprised to find that the words and sentences at the beginning were exactly the same as those written by the intermediary. The sentence structure is also very simple, starting with "I...".
"The intermediary claimed to have polished the documents, but in the end, most of them were written by machines, and I had to correct them myself. It's really a scam. I spent thousands of dollars to pay for the crime." Xiao Weng felt terrified of thinking carefully, and directly used If the paperwork written by AI is discovered by the university to which it is applying, it will be a disaster.
"Writing documents with AI has certain risks. If it is found that it is not original, the university may return the student's application, and the application will be worthless." Chen Qingjia, director of the China Digital Copyright and Intellectual Property Research Center and a professor at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, told Chao News reporter.
So, is AI duplication checking reliable? Chen Qingjia said that the AI plagiarism checking tool has a certain reference function, but there is a problem of accuracy, because the text generated by AI is not completely copied and pasted, and will not be exactly the same as the original text, so there is a certain probability of misjudgment during the plagiarism check.
OpenAI, the development company of ChatGPT, has launched an AI text detector tool to distinguish whether text is written by a human or an AI. But OpenA said that the technology is not yet mature, and about 9% of the works were misjudged. Some organizations have developed third-party detection tools, such as GPTZero and DetectGPT, which have been used by some overseas universities.
Of course, many people in the industry said that it is still quite difficult to fully identify whether the text is from AI or human hands. Perhaps only AI can fight against AI.
Students Hooked on AI Writing Articles
AI documents are like "canned food on the assembly line"
"Since I first dabbled in computing and stepped into this awesome world, I have been fascinated by its potential to change and shape lives. It is with great enthusiasm that I apply to the MSc Computer Science program at the University of Warwick. "The beginning of AI's writing is quite eye-catching.
This is a college application letter written by a reporter from Trendy News. Just enter keywords: British university graduate student, computer major, grade point, scholarship, internship experience. In less than a minute, ChatGPT gave an application letter. The word count is about 600 words, ranging from the introduction to the conclusion.
The reporter asked several English teachers to comment on this article, and everyone said that they could give a "passing score", but they were not outstanding. "A well-regulated article with a complete structure and all the main points are covered." "There are a lot of empty words, and there is suspicion of applying templates." "The language is fine, but there is no personal characteristics, like canned food on the assembly line."
Even so, the sentences are fluent, the vocabulary is rich, and it can be completed in one minute. The "omnipotent" AI is already very popular among foreign students.
"It's much better than mine, why don't you use it?" "It costs three to five thousand to hire someone to write, and the level of writing is about the same as AI's." "AI should rectify the study abroad agency with many pitfalls." Several people who have studied abroad People say this, and Xiao He, who once spent nearly 10,000 yuan to hire an intermediary, is very emotional. It would be great if there was AI back then!
Recently, Zhang Wanqing, a clerical teacher at an independent study abroad studio in Hangzhou, discovered that many students now use ChatGPT to write it first, and then revise it by themselves, or let AI write it well, and ask the clerical teacher to polish it. If you think the number of words is not enough or too many, let AI expand and abbreviate.
It is not a good thing to rely too much on AI. Zhang Wanqing had a brainstorming session with the students, trying to dig out personal strengths and stories, "I gave him a few questions in English and asked him to write a few paragraphs of answers in English, but it turned out that he wrote it in ChatGPT, and it was all nonsense. Blood pressure spiked."
"With AI, students become lazy and no longer think actively. Just like the documents written by AI, there is no deep thinking, and most of them are self-introductions that are superficial, without personalization and expression of true feelings." Zhang Wanqing told reporter.
Empty and beautiful, this is how many people feel about AI creation. Using AI to write study abroad essays also has the same problem.
"Although they have good fluency, the texts generated by AI appear dull and lack diversity and vividness. From a structural point of view, AI also lacks the ability to complete, clear, and well-adjusted logic. Because they only produce texts based on pattern matching, I don’t really understand the meaning of the text.” Li Yuhao, an English teacher in Hangzhou, told reporters.
As for how to use ChatGPT properly, Li Yuhao suggested that students can ask ChatGPT to write sample essays as a reference at the beginning of writing, or ask it to polish when they are finished. ChatGPT plays a role in optimizing language, correcting low-level errors, and refining word count.
Zhang Wanqing also believes that to write an excellent application essay for studying abroad, you must score more than 80 points, which should be able to show your personality and advantages, and have a certain degree of creativity and uniqueness. If you want your application to stand out, you still have to rely on human wisdom.
Will the study abroad agency be "destroyed"
AI brings about a major reshuffle in the industry
AI is approaching the city, and some people say that a large number of jobs will be replaced, and the study abroad agency may be the first batch to fall. A few days ago, some media reported that some independent study abroad agencies lost tens of thousands of monthly salaries, while some study abroad agencies began to shrink their business sections.
"Under the impact of AI, for some intermediaries who only provide clerical services, the business volume has indeed decreased." Yang Fan, a senior study abroad planner at Beijing Safe Landing International Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters.
Yang Fan said that for traditional students, it is more difficult to write documents. Students will buy documents from intermediaries, or pay high prices for document editing services. However, with the emergence of ChatGPT, students can do this part of the work themselves, which will naturally cause losses to intermediaries.
So, will study abroad intermediaries "lose their jobs"? Yang Fan thought it was possible. If the teacher's level is not good enough, just helping students do the most basic writing, or even writing essays for them is a template. There are also teachers with very low qualifications, who will be employed after two or three months of pre-job training. These people are destined to be eliminated.
The reporter noticed that overseas study institutions have also begun to embrace AI on a large scale. For example, there are very popular AI to fill in voluntary bad reviews, and there are also organizations that release prediction products for overseas exams under large models, oral and writing companion robots, and AI assistant empowerment exam systems, etc. AI-related products emerge in endlessly.
"AI is a reshuffle of the industry." Yang Fan said that the market of overseas study intermediaries is uneven, and some people who are just pretending to be good and bad will be eliminated, leaving those who really serve students. Those who can't do it are gradually eliminated by the market, and those who do well will get better and better. This is a process of survival of the fittest.
Looking to the future, can AI really replace the study abroad agency? Yang Fan thought it was impossible. AI can be used as an auxiliary tool for integrating information resources and writing documents, but it is far from reaching this level when it comes to exploring the advantages of students and planning for future majors and careers. And the most valuable part of the study abroad agency is this part.
"Tools such as ChatGPT have certain creative capabilities, but they are relatively low-end. Sometimes they cannot maintain logical self-consistency, and there are also some factual errors. They do not have the ability to complete high-end intellectual activities." Tang Siliang, a professor at the School of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, once told reporters.
Tang Siliang said that from the current point of view, it is only an auxiliary tool, and whether it will completely replace people cannot be realized in the short term. Because ChatGPT is essentially a language model, and the language model does not have the ability to think like a human. In the future, ChatGPT may be able to replace some people who rely on imitation for low-level creative work.