Why AI Still Can't Grade Your Essays Like a Human

AI has a long-standing promise: to revolutionize education. But grading essays, the reality doesn't fully match the hype. Large Language Models (LLMs) are getting better, sure, but they're not there yet. Especially scoring the nitty-gritty details like grammar and conventions.

AI vs. Human: The Grading Showdown

The big question here's, can AI really replace human graders? Well, we've got data from three essay-scoring datasets, ASAP 2.0, ELLIPSE, and DREsS, that suggest otherwise. These models show a decent match with human scores on overall essay quality. We're talking about a Quadratic Weighted Kappa of around 0.6. Not bad, but when you break it down into specifics, it gets shaky.

Directionally, these models are harsher than human graders on grammar and conventions. A major negative bias that AI developers didn't see coming. So, even if AI feels faster, it doesn't mean it's better. Another week, another Solana protocol, or in this case, another AI, doing what it promises, but not entirely delivering.

The Problem with Specifics

Why does AI struggle with specifics? It's all about the prompts. Short, keyword-based prompts do better than long, detailed ones, especially for multi-trait scoring. But relying on raw zero-shot scores isn't the strategy. Instead, a bias-correction-first approach could save the day.

Using small, human-labeled sets to estimate bias and correct it might be the way forward. You won't need extensive training datasets to detect this bias. Especially for traits like grammar, a small sample suffices. But for higher-order traits? You'll need much more data. And isn't that just like AI, brilliant in theory, but still needing a human touch?

Why Should You Care?

So, what's the takeaway? If you're an educator or a tech enthusiast, don't rush to replace human graders with AI just yet. The technology's promising, but it still requires a lot of human oversight. Until it no longer needs that human touch, it's more like a partnership than a replacement.

In the end, AI's journey to grading perfection is a marathon, not a sprint. It's getting better, but if you haven't bridged over yet, you're not missing much. At least not today.