AI vs. German Physics Olympiad

[Hornbein]

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/147

"GPT-4o outperformed the average human participant, and the newer o1-preview model did even better." Note that average students don't bother to enter the Olympiad. These are the better/best students.

 

[TensorCalculus]

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/147

"GPT-4o outperformed the average human participant, and the newer o1-preview model did even better." Note that average students don't bother to enter the Olympiad. These are the better/best students.

Not surprised: I know someone who used ChatGPT to cheat on the British physics olympiad and got an exceptionally high score.
It's a nightmare (but also very impressive)
Google's AlphaGeometry AI was able to do better on IMO geometry problems than almost all of the participants. Crazy!

 

[berkeman]

I know someone who used ChatGPT to cheat on the British physics olympiad and got an exceptionally high score.

Did they get caught? Back when I was in university (many years ago), if you knew someone cheated on an exam and did not turn them in, you could be considered just as guilty of cheating and face the same consequences.

 

[TensorCalculus]

Did they get caught? Back when I was in university (many years ago), if you knew someone cheated on an exam and did not turn them in, you could be considered just as guilty of cheating and face the same consequences.

Don't know. Everyone in our year knew that they used ChatGPT they sort of turned it into a year-wide joke.

The test didn't matter anyway: they simply made all of us do it "for fun" and our score made no difference whatsoever to anything... apart from getting a certificate. I honestly don't think the school would have cared if someone told them that the kid cheated with ChatGPT...
They're really (overly) lax about cheating here, unless it's on an important test (e.g. GCSEs). They certainly don't have a rule like that - that's a new one for me!

 

[willyengland]

AFAIK not even pocket calculators are allowed in those olympiads. How did they do it?

 

[TensorCalculus]

The school literally does not care because they were making a bunch of kids do a physics challenge which is meant to be for people years older than them, "for fun"...
The story is that they just used their phone under the table, and the teacher, if they did see, didn't mind.
We are allowed calculators though!

EDIT/ADD: I just realised, when checking grade boundaries to quantify just how well she did, it wasn't the British Physics Olympiad that we did, we did the easier version, The Physics Challenge. A merit is 20/50 and that girl got 42/50 just using ChatGPT.