Documents obtained by The Daily Tar Heel revealed the use of Artificial Intelligence in the UNC admissions process. The Durham-based company Measurement Incorporated provides the technology for the essay review.
The Measurement Incorporated website states that the company offers automated scoring for writing through their Project Essay Grade engine.
The UNC Office of Undergraduate Admissions uses advanced automated technology created by the company to review for grammar and writing, UNC Media Relations wrote in a statement to The DTH.
The PEG engine is machine-learning, according to the Measurement Incorporated website. Machine learning is a subset of the broader category of AI that uses mathematical models of data to teach a computer.
The DTH previously reported on UNC's use of AI in the admissions essay review process. Media Relations did not share what technology the office used at the time of the previous story's publication.
The PEG engine doesn't read essays to assign a score like a human grader would, Measurement Incorporated Chief Strategy Officer Corey Palermo explained in a paper about the company's technology. Instead, Palermo wrote, the engine matches various characteristics that an essay may have with the scores assigned by human essay graders and uses those comparisons to predict a score for the essay.
“This is similar to the machine learning Netflix applies to subscribers' viewing habit data and Amazon applies to customers' page‐view and purchase data to make recommendations,” Palermo wrote.
Despite multiple attempts, The Daily Tar Heel was unable to reach a Measurement Incorporated representative for comment by the time of publication.
Measurement Incorporated was founded in 1980 and provides different educational assessment services to various organizations.