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The death of the short-form physics essay in the coming AI revolution
Open accessAbstract
The latest AI language modules can produce original, high quality full short-form (300-word) Physics essays within seconds. These technologies such as ChatGPT and davinci-003 are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. In this work, we present evidence of AI generated short-form essays achieving First-Class grades on an essay writing assessment from an accredited, current university Physics module. The assessment requires students answer five open-ended questions with a short, 300-word essay each. Fifty AI answers were generated to create ten submissions that were independently marked by five separate markers. The AI generated submissions achieved an average mark of 71 ± 2 % , in strong agreement with the current module average of 71 ± 5 % . A typical AI submission would therefore most-likely be awarded a First Class, the highest classification available at UK universities. Plagiarism detection software returned a plagiarism score between 2 ± 1 % (Grammarly) and 7 ± 2 % (TurnitIn). We argue that these results indicate that current natural language processing AI represent a significant threat to the fidelity of short-form essays as an assessment method in Physics courses.
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“Lexical density is an indicator of information richness and compactness. 57,58,59”
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Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Yeadon, W., Inyang, O.-O., Mizouri, A., Peach, A., & Testrow, C. P.
- Affiliations
- Durham University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Yeadon, Will
- Venue
- Physics Education
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2023-04-05
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 035027
- ISSN
- 0031-9120 (ISSN-L)
- 1361-6552
- OpenAlex
- W4362551436
- Cited by
- 199
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 68 · 2023: 54
- FWCI
- 46.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Physics Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Artificial Intelligence in Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Academic integrity and plagiarism
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Keywords
- AI-generated text, ChatGPT, physics assessment, plagiarism detection, academic integrity, natural language processing, university physics education
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