I totally agree that "AI" grading is totally bullshit. But, I also have plenty of experience teaching/TAing large courses, and after reading too many essays they all become semanticically saturated meaninglessness. One can not help but skim them, and grade according to a few quick heuristics. At that point one tries to be self-consistent and defensible in one's grading, but careful consideration is right out. I suspect state graders are dealing with way more than 100 essays per person and are probably on a tight schedule too. It's quite possible that a ML model is better than an exhausted human grader, as their cognitive strategies are mostly identical.
The solution isn't to do a better job at grading 'meaninglessness' but to stop requiring the production of it in the first place.
One major problem with algorithmic approaches, whether automated or not, is that they become the definition of good in the context and therefore become something that cannot be argued against. And of course it makes 'teaching to the test' an even more likely outcome.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I'd attribute this to wanting a dumbed down population. Unfortunately I think it is probably the other way round, the population is already dumbed down and a belief in AI unicorns is the result.
As Aristotle said to Alexander: 'There is no royal road to geometry', and so it is with education; it's hard work for both the student and the educator and no amount of AI/ML/algorithmic snake oil will change that without also changing the meaning of the word education.
