There are certain things that you just can’t teach a computer–the ability to love, for one. Also, it’s apparently really difficult to get one to appreciate the idiosyncrasies of The Old Man and the Sea. Researchers at The Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors recently put an essay-grading machine to the test by feeding it passages by Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway.
Churchill’s famous “fight on the beaches” speech was too repetitive, according to the machine. Adds The Times, “His reference to the “might of the German army” lost him marks because the computer interpreted this as an incorrect way of writing “might have” rather than recognising “might” as an abstract noun.”
Hemingway lost points for lack of detail. The opening of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, meanwhile, was just classified as “bizarre.” Some students, meanwhile, have managed to fool the machines, which experts are calling “schmoozing the computer.” A Phillip K. Dick book title if ever I’ve heard one.
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