UGC NET cancelled papers written by AI?

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has cancelled and ordered fresh paper examinations in English, commerce, and sociology after a series of errors were identified in the UGC-NET papers. These errors include incorrect names of renowned sociologists and numerous repeated questions, which have been attributed to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in exam preparation, although NTA denies this.

The UGC-NET test is crucial for individuals seeking to teach and conduct research in universities across India, making the mistake a significant issue. The sociology paper faced the most criticism, with mistaken names such as George Ritzer being listed as Putzer, Talcott Parsons as Parsow, and G S Ghurye as Ghunye. Martha Nussbaum's name also disappeared from the final list.

Besides the names, the questions were deemed garbled and unrelated to the material students had studied. Another issue arose in the English paper, where around 67 out of 150 questions were repeated from a previous UGC-NET exam, including identical answer choice orders. The Commerce section also reported similar repeats on topics like taxation, break-even analysis, capital structure, and services marketing.

The education ministry was left puzzled by the lack of action despite the flaws, with officials wanting the papers cancelled and re-tests scheduled by the end of July or the first week of August. This delay came as NTA only announced the cancellations after about six weeks, releasing provisional answer keys for 84 of the 87 subjects.

Ministry sources revealed that the flawed papers were designed in an ad hoc manner, with NTA officials unable to finalize the answer keys due to this ad hoc approach. They questioned how examiners could have designed questions without knowing their answers, highlighting an apparent oversight in the examination setting process. NTA director general Abhishek Singh has firmly denied AI involvement in creating the papers, stating that human review was conducted post-creation.

However, critics argue that the real question is whether adequate human academic review was conducted after the examination process. The source from JNU emphasized the importance of human academic oversight in conjunction with technological tools, asserting that reliance on technology alone is insufficient to prevent such errors.