Writing Instructor, Skeptical of Automated Grading, Pits Machine vs. Machine

1 min read Original article ↗
Les Perelman (left), with the help of students at MIT and Harvard, created the Babel Generator, 
a software program that generates meaningless essays to test the mettle of machine graders.

Les Perelman (left), with the help of students at MIT and Harvard, created the Babel Generator, 
a software program that generates meaningless essays to test the mettle of machine graders.M. Scott Brauer for The Chronicle

Cambridge, Mass.

Les Perelman, a former director of undergraduate writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sits in his wife’s office and reads aloud from his latest essay.

“Privateness has not been and undoubtedly never will be lauded, precarious, and decent,” he reads. “Humankind will always subjugate privateness.”

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About the Author

Steve Kolowich was a senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. He wrote about extraordinary people in ordinary times, and ordinary people in extraordinary times.