Alejandro1 comments on Open Thread, May 19 - 25, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Hack the SAT essay:
First, some background: The SAT has an essay, graded on a scale from 1-6. The essay scoring guidelines are here . I'll quote the important ones for my purposes:
“Each essay is independently scored by two readers on a scale from 1 to 6. These readers' scores are combined to produce the 2-12 scale. The essay readers are experienced and trained high school and college teachers.” “Essays not written on the essay assignment will receive a score of zero”
Reports vary, but apparently, most grader spend between 90 seconds to 2 and a half minutes on each essay.
My challenge, inspired by the Aibox experiment, is as follows. You are an AI taking the test. You need to write an off-topic anything that will convince both graders to give you a six. (Or, if the two graders disagree by more than one point, a third grader takes over, and you only need to convince them). You have 25 minutes to actually write it, but unlimited time to plan in advance. You could probably draw anything, not just writing, but you run the risk of them seeing a picture and immediately giving a zero without having time to get hacked.
I've come up with two ideas so far:
I didn't think either of them were very good, but I like the concept. Some rules: No paying them off or threatening them with physical harm.
Can anyone come up with better ideas?
I'm putting this on open thread because it's my first real post, and I'm not sure of the reaction.
First observation: Surely any entity intelligent enough to hack the essay according to the rules you have set is also intelligent enough to get the maximum grade (much more easily) by the usual means of writing the assigned essay…
Second observation: Since the concept of "being on topic" is vague (essentially, anything that humans interpret as being on a certain topic is on that topic) maybe the easiest way to hack it following your rules would be to write an essay that is not on topic by the criteria the designers of the exam had in mind, but that is close enough that it can confuse the graders into believing it is on topic. An analogy could be how some postmodernists confused people into believing they were doing philosophy...
On the point that any AI smart enough to do this could write a 12 essay: remember that you don't know the essay topic in advance. You only have 25 minutes to write, while if you do one off-topic, you have more time.