LLMs Don't Grade Essays Like Humans — But Here's What They're Actually Good At (API Tutorial)
A study found that large language models (LLMs) like GPT and Llama do not grade essays the same way as human raters. However, LLMs can be useful for other writing-related tasks like essay generation, writing assistance, and automated content creation.
Why it matters
This research highlights the limitations of using LLMs for certain writing-related tasks, while also identifying areas where they can provide valuable support to developers and educators.
Key Points
- 1LLMs tend to assign higher scores to short or underdeveloped essays, while penalizing longer essays with minor errors
- 2LLMs can be reliably used to support essay scoring, but should not replace human graders
- 3LLMs are good at generating essay drafts, providing writing assistance, and automating content creation for e-learning
Details
Researchers published a study showing that the agreement between LLM scores and human scores on automated essay scoring (AES) remains relatively weak. LLMs follow internally coherent patterns that don't align with how human raters evaluate essays. However, this doesn't mean LLMs are useless for education or writing tools. They can be effectively used for tasks like generating essay drafts, providing writing assistance (not grading), summarizing long essays, and automating content creation for e-learning platforms. Developers can leverage LLMs to build AI writing coaches that suggest improvements and flag weaknesses, rather than attempting to replace human graders.
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