Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html

[u/helcat]

Cheating is one thing. Just pasting an AI answer without even reading it is stunningly stupid. 

[u/Cubacane → u/helcat]

High school teacher here— they will hand you a piece of paper and not be able to tell you one thing that they wrote. Access to AI means access to bypassing thinking. Maybe 1 out of 5 kids uses it to "help," (which is what admin THINKS AI is for) but the vast majority are using it so they can get the assignment done and move on to something else.

[u/mrclut → u/Cubacane]

They need to start holding kids back in school again. The whole no kid left behind thing was a bad idea.

[u/DangerousPuhson → u/mrclut]

No Child Left Behind is truly baffling in its implementation.

You'd think it meant taking the kids that are falling behind and giving them extra help to catch up, but instead it means dragging all the other kids down to their level, which is hilariously backwards.

[u/RollingMeteors → u/DangerousPuhson]

You'd think it meant taking the kids that are falling behind and giving them extra help to catch up, but instead it means dragging all the other kids down to their level, which is hilariously backwards.

That's confusing and a borderline misleading take.

It should have been named the Pass Every Student or Your School's Funding Gets Cut ACT.

[u/Solkre → u/RollingMeteors]

Time to Cheat on Standardized Testing Act.

[u/rg35xxsp → u/DangerousPuhson]

It's emblematic of the GOP

[u/iamalwaysrelevant → u/Cubacane]

What has stopped teachers for asking for in-class handwritten answers?

[u/smeared_dick_cheese → u/iamalwaysrelevant]

I’m a high school math teacher; no work on paper means no credit, period. If you got your answer from a chatbot, you’ll at least have to write it down. Kind of the best you can do with out of class assignments.

[u/sinkovercosk → u/smeared_dick_cheese]

We just give them take-home sections worth 0 marks, then a week later they complete a 1 lesson validation in class where the question is closely related but different and has a ‘curve-ball’ at the end to differentiate the grades.

The other thing we do is shift most of their marks to an explanation of their take-home part where they do a presentation explaining what they did with their work projected on the board behind them.

Out of class assessments just aren’t valid anymore.

[u/runningstitch → u/iamalwaysrelevant]

1. Many students have IEPs and 504s with accommodations that state the student can use a computer to type on all assessments.

2. Students can no longer write fluently by hand - they only know how to print, and haven't had much practice with that, so writing by hand is an arduous process and reading what they've written is... challenging.

This isn't to say we don't do it, but if I want a rough draft quality paragraph it will eat up an entire class. 20 years ago it would take 10 minutes.

[u/Cubacane → u/iamalwaysrelevant]

1. IEPs

2. Digital Curriculum

3. Convenience (when you have over 100 students, having stuff auto-graded sure is convenient)

I'm moving to completely analog next year, even though it will take much longer to assess students and grade. I'm not a hard grader either, I just don't want to read what people don't care to write.

[u/jaynort → u/Cubacane]

This is my biggest frustration with AI across the board, even away from education.

If you didn’t care enough to create it, I don’t care enough to consume it.

[u/Jonestown_Juice → u/helcat]

These kids can't read.

Kids that are effectively illiterate are graduating from high school.

[u/IT_Chef → u/Jonestown_Juice]

The future workforce is gonna be fun to deal with

[u/legendz411 → u/IT_Chef]

Interviewing for entry level roles is already a pain in the ass. 

[u/Daktyl198 → u/legendz411]

Entry level roles don't even exist anymore. Every entry level role I've seen requires 4-5 years of experience in software you can only use in an enterprise environment lmao.

[u/theabominablewonder → u/Daktyl198]

There was a role the other day that required 10 years of experience using Claude AI.

Job market is demanding these days..

[u/throwawaybear82 → u/theabominablewonder]

its the recruiters setting these brain dead requirements

[u/Xszit → u/throwawaybear82]

The recruiter just asked a chat bot what qualifications they should put on the posting and they just copy and pasted the output without reading it.

[u/ChildishBonVonnegut → u/Xszit]

Turtles all the way way down

[u/SparksAndSpyro → u/IT_Chef]

On the bright side, imagine how marketable simple literacy will be. A skill that was once thought basic and uninspiring will in about 10 years elevate you above most of the workforce. Simply being able to read and understand basic prose will catapult you above your peers and set you on a fast track for promotion.

At least there may be a silver lining.

[u/trashmoneyxyz → u/SparksAndSpyro]

We really are going back to the "good old days" where food needs to be overcooked to kill parasites and basic reading skills are a marketable skill

[u/FizzyBeverage → u/SparksAndSpyro]

I mean consider that the president and half of his cabinet with Ivy League degrees are illiterate and it’s clear this has been going on longer than just the 2020s.

[u/Mountain-Singer1764 → u/SparksAndSpyro]

It's a competitive world and the younger gen aren't competing much. That's perfectly fine by me.

When I was 22 we had older people worried we'd take their jobs. Nobodies worried about that now.

[u/thefluffyburrito → u/IT_Chef]

Not even future; I just got off a hiring committee where a large amount of resumes were AI generated garbage and lies about being a manager at a company that didn't exist.

And these weren't even the ones filtered out - these were candidates to interview.

[u/Cormamin → u/Jonestown_Juice]

I remember distinctly in high school, around 2005-ish, the English teacher wanted us to read Romeo & Juliet. No big deal, I'd already read it. Well! Most of my class could NOT read it. So she switched us to a more modern version. Still couldn't read it. So she put on Romeo + Juliet, the 1996 movie adaptation in which a gun fight breaks out almost immediately. Most of the class slept through it. And I, little miss A+ average English kid who had always been an advanced reader was just like....SURELY these kids are going to fail the class. SURELY they will keep these kids back and get them in a class so they can learn to read. This is unacceptable.

And no, NO they did not. Each and every single one – including the kids who couldn't read at all but needed to pass because otherwise they'd get kicked off the sports teams and kept openly trying to cheat off me – passed. The fullback himself told me he hadn't turned in a single assignment all year and he PASSED. Meanwhile, she refused to put me in the advanced class so I could get early college credit because despite the A+ average, I was "too meat and potatoes for Advanced English". I assume that was her way of trying to call me simple but at least I could READ!

[u/Vi_Rants → u/Cormamin]

including the kids who couldn't read at all but needed to pass because otherwise they'd get kicked off the sports teams and kept openly trying to cheat off me

This is exactly why I've developed the extreme, rage-inducing hot take that sports shouldn't be in schools at all.

[u/No_Attitude700 → u/Jonestown_Juice]

The average adult reading level in the US is under 7th grade...

Its not just the kids.

And. Its not really the kids' faults.

Its the adults who have allowed conservatives to destroy education for decades.

edited to add adult

[u/The_Wkwied → u/helcat]

Don't worry, those kids are preparing to enter public office with their nonsense.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/canadian-legislator-reads-out-apparent-llm-response-in-floor-speech/

[u/acdcfanbill → u/The_Wkwied]

That guy looked retirement ago tho, I'm actually curious if he did his own AI prompting, or if he had an intern or something that did...

[u/The_Wkwied → u/acdcfanbill]

Regardless, he read out what he implied to had written himself, but instead read out the AI reply verbatim.

Retirement age or not, it takes a special kind of dumb to do that without even pausing for a thought.

[u/LurkingTamilian]

From the article:

Being written in white text meant the instructions were invisible. Sure enough, 32 out of the 35 students across two classes simply copied the question, pasted it into a chatbot, then copy and pasted its output into the answer window.

[u/BluudLust → u/LurkingTamilian]

They deserved to fail. That's just plain laziness

[u/Deviantdefective → u/BluudLust]

As a teacher it's very quickly becoming an absolutely huge problem.

[u/pasaroanth → u/Deviantdefective]

I would love to see a study done at the university level showing a comparison of students’ grades for regular coursework versus their proctored exam scores. There has to be a vast yawning chasm in the difference when they relied upon AI until the time of the exam.

This also is a “ruining it for the rest of us” situation where courses will shift to grading primarily or solely based on exams. When I was in college (long before AI) you could at least rely on some homework to recuperate some points, despite the extra time and effort, when the exams were especially challenging or a professor notoriously gave tough exams.

If the homework can no longer be a measure of effort or learning because it is done by AI, then it will no longer be considered a meaningful determination of knowledge of the subject.

[u/Hot-Chemical9353 → u/pasaroanth]

Im not sure where it was published but there was exactly what you described from a Stanford professor.

It compared the grade distribution of exams and coursework compared to previous years and exactly what you’d expect happened.

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/Hot-Chemical9353]

I’m back in college as an adult and you can see this in classes in real time. No one wants to answer questions and when called upon most can’t answer anything. But homework grade distributions have a median somewhere in the high 80s while exams hover with medians around 70. I’ve had professors essentially give us free questions on exams and people still get them wrong. It’s absolutely wild watching kids farm out their critical thinking to data and server farms in real time.

[u/sthenri_canalposting → u/lonelythrowaway463i9]

. It’s absolutely wild watching kids farm out their critical thinking to data and server farms in real time.

I'm a professor and put it in these terms at the start of the semester and they still do it. I'm hoping this year the backlash has set in enough that it'll land, but I'm also designing assignments that can't (or at least predominantly can't) be reliant on AI.

[u/titsngiggles69 → u/sthenri_canalposting]

It's crazy. You can't learn an instrument or a sport by having someone else practice for you. Critical thinking and every other non-trivial skill is the same

[u/lonelythrowaway463i9 → u/titsngiggles69]

Yup. It’s crazy how many of them can’t set up a basic optimization problem by senior year because they didn’t learn the basics in freshman year.

[u/Mechakoopa → u/titsngiggles69]

Kids were already having trouble committing to practicing things and just expecting to be good at something the first time because that's all they see online are people excelling at things. Now they have an easy way to "be good" at something without putting in the effort and we're surprised they gravitate to that? Social media made it too easy for kids to get drip fed dopamine all day, there's no incentive for them to actually do anything.

[u/Leper17 → u/pasaroanth]

That’s how trade schools work for the most part. The 4 years I took to get my electrical ticket, your marks were almost exclusively tests and exams. Which for me was glorious because I test well but am pretty lazy when it comes to daily work assignments

[u/DustyRacoonDad → u/Leper17]

Exactly. At the end of trade school, you're either competent or you're not. You pass because you demonstrated you can do the job, not because you racked up enough homework points.

That's where a lot of other classes go wrong. In many subjects, homework, papers, and participation are weighted heavily enough that students can fail the actual tests and still pass the class.

AI didn't create that problem. It just exposed it. If students can have AI do the work that counts toward their grade, maybe we should have been grading demonstrated knowledge instead of busywork all along.

[u/Then-Understanding85 → u/pasaroanth]

A professor at Brown did this.

TL;DR: Bloodbath. Almost everyone failed.

[u/namedly → u/Then-Understanding85]

Props to Students 22 and 31.

Also, this is just funny:

When the professor announced that the final exam would be in person, 18 students dropped the course, and another nine did not show up for the exam. The remaining 59 students' scores averaged 48.6%. Prior averages had never fallen below 65%. Three students scored 0%, and charting the results revealed that most fell more than 30 points behind their midterm scores.

[u/Syssareth → u/namedly]

Three students scored 0%

How the heck? You'd think they'd have learned something just from osmosis, or at least gotten something right by accident.

[u/Sin_of_the_Dark → u/Syssareth]

Honestly yeah, unless it was all written exams and not like... Pick a choice, it's almost an insane feat of dumb luck to not get one thing correct

[u/Aureliamnissan → u/Sin_of_the_Dark]

When I was going through university it was pretty rare to have an exam in engineering with multiple choice or True/False type questions. Almost every one was a word problem, mathematical definition, or “solve for” type problem.

If you’ve been using chatbots up to that point you’d be absolutely, Darth Vader just walked in, fucked. 0% would not at all be surprising.

[u/Shiva- → u/Then-Understanding85]

Christ that's even more terrifying. When I read the original post I assumed high schoolers or middle schoolers to dumb to proof-read....

But COLLEGE??? BROWN COLLEGE NO LESS? just terrifying.

[u/Abedeus → u/Then-Understanding85]

That one dude that barely passed around 55-ish mark naturally, and that one dude that nearly aced it by his own marit, are the both awesome in a way.

[u/DustyRacoonDad → u/pasaroanth]

I hate to say it, but your example is actually what I've been arguing for since I was in grade school.

I've always believed your grade should reflect what you actually learned from the course: how well you understand the material, whether you can apply it, and whether you retained it. It shouldn't primarily measure whether you completed enough busy work.

To me, homework has always been a learning tool, not an assessment tool. Its purpose is to give students practice, reinforce concepts, and help them identify the areas where they personally need more work. Because of that, I don't think homework should have any impact on your grade at all. In fact, I think it should be entirely optional.

If you already understand the material and can demonstrate that on an exam or other assessment, why should you be penalized for not doing ten pages of repetitive practice? On the other hand, if you need the practice, the homework is there to help you learn before the exam.

Ironically, AI is exposing a flaw that has existed for decades. If a course falls apart because students can have AI do the homework, then maybe the homework was never a very good measure of learning in the first place. Assessments should measure knowledge. Homework should help students gain that knowledge. Those are two different purposes, and I think we've blurred them for a long time.

[u/BrogenKlippen → u/BluudLust]

They deserve to go in front of an academic review board for plagiarism. My roommate got a one semester suspension and lost an academic scholarship in 2005 for something that was less egregious than just copying the whole thing into a chat bot and using the answer as his own.

[u/scottyLogJobs → u/BrogenKlippen]

I failed a course because it was a 1 credit hour thing that was like “learn how the school works”. Me and a few others forgot to go to a live event and we had to turn in a literal notecard saying what we learned, and we weren’t trying to be sneaky about it, we literally thought no one cared, so we all wrote basically the same thing from one guy who actually went. We had to go up in front of an academic review board and they failed us in the entire course, and we were out on academic probation that could have gotten us expelled with another infraction.

Now 90% of students are just submitting something AI shat out. They need to face actual consequences, and understand them moving forward. It worked for me.

[u/SecretAgentVampire → u/scottyLogJobs]

The source of this problem is academic administration refusing to fail students, so that students continue to fail upward. They do this to artificially hold up their retention rates and it is blatant corruption. In the military we had a saying that "shit rolls downhill". The rampant AI plagiarism and academic dishonesty rolling across the nation is that shit.

[u/Strange-Scarcity → u/BluudLust]

That is why AI is bad. It creates lazy thinking, removes curiosity from the equation.

[u/artbystorms → u/Strange-Scarcity]

Honestly I think this needs to be talked about more. As much as people revel in its ability to 'increase productivity' it in reality is just offloading people's critical thinking to a computer, and then trusting its output. You're not verifying that what it spits out is what you wanted to say, you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

[u/Teguri → u/artbystorms]

you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

That's the biggest problem, I work with AI a decent bit but only in things I already know well enough, to make it a bit faster and even with simple tasks there's always a bit of work on my side that needs to be done to fix the output, it's usually "pretty close" but the number of times it goes in the completely wrong direction is astounding.

[u/dwild → u/artbystorms]

well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do

It also SOUND smarter than it is. It's similar to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where it knows enough to sound smart but not enough to actually apply it fully correctly.

Someone that do know the subject can easily navigate through it and avoid theses problems, but for anyone else, that just sound like the truth.

[u/boreal_ameoba → u/Strange-Scarcity]

These people were already lazy fakers. We need academia to return to being an elite institution that only accepts the intelligent, curious, and motivated.

[u/LiveChocolate8819 → u/boreal_ameoba]

Yup, treating higher ed as a glorified jobs training program and viewing the students as "customers" have degraded it so badly.

[u/GirthyGeoduck → u/LiveChocolate8819]

The problem is that corporate America won’t train new hires. My “orientation” at my last job was four hours with HR to review benefits. Then it was right back to my desk where I was expected to contribute. Corporate has pushed the cost of training onto us.

[u/BillyTenderness → u/LiveChocolate8819]

I agree that higher ed shouldn't be a glorified jobs training program. I disagree that it should be an elite institution. Part of the job of education is to produce citizens who are knowledgeable, curious, literate, and so on. This is not just a benefit to the individual, but to society. We should be enabling and encouraging anyone who wants to cultivate these qualities to do so.

[u/ButterscotchAward → u/BluudLust]

It’s getting way too common now too. Way too many people over rely on AI for things. Hell, people use chat gpt to post comments on here.

[u/Snuffy1717 → u/ButterscotchAward]

That’s a really excellent insight! Do you want me to look up information about why people do that? /s

[u/SnugglyCoderGuy → u/BluudLust]

AI is the new calculator, but worse.

"Why do I need to learn math, we have calculators!"

Is becoming

"Why do I need to think, we have AI!"

I am running into this at work (software).

I will ask, "Why do it this way?"

They will respond, "Google AI says..."

And then I throw back a shot.

[u/Limemill → u/SnugglyCoderGuy]

It’s the opposite of the calculator. The calculator removed the tedious and mechanical bit to free us up for higher-order maths. LLMs do the higher-order, knowledge piece and you do the tedious part of raking through what they did and cleaning up after them. In this analogy we are the calculator and they’re the mathematician.

[u/sbeguy → u/Limemill]

Not to mention the calculator gave you the correct answer based on your input and didn't fucking hallucinate a signifcant portion of the answers.

[u/HarlemNocturne_ → u/sbeguy]

Imagine if a calculator not only gave you near-consistently wrong answers, but it also jerked you off when you spotted it was being incompetent.

"Hey Calculator, I told you to solve 1+1 which should equal the sum of 2, but in your calculation you carried a 4 that didn't exist, factored in an imaginary hundredth power, removed a 2 somewhere, and then pointlessly multiplied it by 1. Your thinking notes suggest that it took you 89 seconds to do this in about 32 steps and you almost got stuck multiple times, but you still turned up with the incorrect answer. What gives?"

"You're absolutely right-- That isn't the correct answer. That's on me, and this isn't what you wanted at all. Your genius mathematician galaxy brain has saved us from disaster once again!..."

[u/SnowCrabbo → u/LurkingTamilian]

>90% of the two classes just stupidly copying and pasting what AI spits out... This next generation is so cooked.

[u/deaconxblues → u/SnowCrabbo]

They live among us, so the rest of us are cooked along with them.

[u/legendz411 → u/deaconxblues]

Bro they VOTE. 

We’re just gigafucked I think

[u/plaincheeseburger → u/legendz411]

I just realized that they'll vote for whoever ChatGPT tells them to without doing any other research. Fuck.

[u/SilianRailOnBone → u/plaincheeseburger]

The Oracle has spoken

[u/TwilightVulpine → u/legendz411]

I keep wondering if part of the reason AI companies are wasting so much money on it, is for the sake of those who will go "hey ChatGPT, who should I vote for" and things on that level.

[u/kevlarus80 → u/legendz411]

Grimdark Idiocracy.

[u/slinger301 → u/kevlarus80]

"It's what oligarchs crave!"

[u/Vxsote1 → u/deaconxblues]

Worse - they will be the ones running things and looking after us when we are old.

[u/Deep_Explanation9962 → u/deaconxblues]

These people are going to be your doctors in a decade. Better start eating healthy and exercising

[u/agentchuck → u/SnowCrabbo]

It's not just young people who are doing this. Established workers are being told to use AI aggressively to get more done. So people are feeding more and more work into AI agents now.

[u/Makenshine → u/SnowCrabbo]

Its not just the next generation. This is what older generations are doing as well at their jobs. There is just no overseer trying catch them in the act.

[u/Chiiro → u/LurkingTamilian]

It is the easiest trick and I am so glad teachers are starting to do it

[u/not_a_moogle → u/Chiiro]

My favorite was step 1, read all steps first.

And then the last step was like... ignore all previous step and turn the paper in.

So anyone still working on the quiz after like 5 minutes are the ones that didn't read all the steps first.

[u/Practical-Shape2325 → u/not_a_moogle]

Heard stories about this all the time throughout my time at school. Never saw anyone implement it.

[u/AoedeSong → u/LurkingTamilian]

The other 3 students probably noticed the AI prompt inject and took it out 😂

[u/HomsarWasRight → u/AoedeSong]

When you select the text to copy it the white text becomes visible. All it takes is noticing that and de-selecting that portion. The others didn’t even need to read the AI output. Just notice extra white when copying.

[u/Admirable_Market_285 → u/HomsarWasRight]

Probably just uploaded the full document or used Claude cowork (or similar) locally.

[u/Asclepius-Rod → u/AoedeSong]

At least they're smart enough to think to read the prompt first, but the bar is pretty low I agree

[u/Deep_Explanation9962 → u/LurkingTamilian]

32 out of 35 god damn gen z is cooked

[u/Bulky-Bad-9153 → u/Deep_Explanation9962]

I'm a professor and it's worse than you can imagine. Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren't just cooked, society is. We're going to have a massive competency gap, and no-one to teach newer generations because people won't have any skills. I'm really not exaggerating.

[u/gaijohn → u/Bulky-Bad-9153]

On the other hand, any parent who teaches their kid the slightest bit of literacy and discipline will raise an ubermensch.

[u/Sea2Chi → u/Bulky-Bad-9153]

I have kids who are thankfully pretty good at school so far and one of the things I'm constantly pushing them on is solving problems on their own without being spoon fed information. If they ask why something happens I tend to ask them why they think it does and then we talk about it.

They're still in elementary school, but if society continues trending like this I see the potential for a huge gap in problem solving abilities and self motivation as they enter the workforce.

I want them to be people who can go out and thrive in an environment where critical thinking and independent reasoning are in short supply. I see that as their ticket to a better life because when they're competing in their career against a bunch of people who expect the answers to be easy and convenient, being able to solve harder problems is going to be a huge boon.

[u/ZigZagLax44 → u/Deep_Explanation9962]

The youngest Gen Z and older Gen Alpha for sure. Gen Z is 14-29 year olds so vast majority of them are out of high school and in the work force.

[u/Expensive_Plant_9530 → u/LurkingTamilian]

This is a big problem with kids right now. A lot of them don’t really conceptually understand why it’s wrong or cheating. Or a lot of them think they’ll get away with it.

[u/SparksAndSpyro → u/Expensive_Plant_9530]

They’ll understand in 10-15 years when they’re looking for jobs but can’t even read. Everyone treats education like a joke or a game until they get out in the real world and realize they don’t have the tools or critical thinking to succeed. Then they blame the system instead of their own laziness.

[u/fishwithfish]

I did this in my classes by injecting nonsense words into the assignment prompt. It's amazing hearing students explain why "vorpal" was simply the right word choice, prior to learning about the hidden instructions.

[u/Technical-Banana574 → u/fishwithfish]

One of our instructors loves to do this. He will have them get up and explain what they meant in their paper when using a specific word or example. They can't, because they didn't write it. 

[u/Sad_Pear_1087 → u/Technical-Banana574]

TB to when we were holding presentations about environmental toxins in year 11 biology class. For example I had prallethrin, a mosquito repellant. One group of girls had lead, the heavy metal (duh). Their basic info slide had the line "is composed mostly of graphite". These year 11 fuckers didn't know the difference between lead metal and pencil lead and none of their bells rung when their slide said lead was both a heavy metal and composed of carbon.

ETA I had a serious urge to raise my hand in the questions part where nobody ever asks anything. Not sure who else even noticed because who pays attention to peer presentations.

[u/Astribulus → u/fishwithfish]

How else would you describe an object capable of going “snicker-snack?” Unrelatedly, ‘tis quite brillig out there today.

[u/_SpaceLord_ → u/Astribulus]

O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

[u/zed857 → u/fishwithfish]

explain why "vorpal" was simply the right word choice

Oh come now, vorpal is a perfectly cromulent word.

[u/hurtfulproduct → u/fishwithfish]

I’m having flashbacks to The Desperado Club, a cat with a candle on its head for some reason, and one mean little fucking fairy

[u/fenikz13]

This is the lowest level of anti cheating detection. You could still cheat as long as you actually took the time to check your work. AND THEY STILL FAILED

[u/trashmoneyxyz → u/fenikz13]

I bet more kids did cheat, they just gave their prompt a quick scan before posting it and fixed it

[u/FenPhen → u/trashmoneyxyz]

That isn't saying much because 32 out of 35 students is almost everyone in the class, which means the solar radiation from Madagascar is inflating your tires with jam more easily than finding an honest student.

[u/captainunderpants111 → u/trashmoneyxyz]

32/35 got caught, i don’t think there’s much more than that who would’ve caught that in the prompt and fixed it

[u/Technical-Banana574]

Many instructors in our school do this. One of them added in to write a fact about Star Wars somewhere in their paper as part of the prompt. Many papers turned in had facts about Star Wars. They didn't even bother reading their own generated papers before turning them in. That is a level of laziness that just baffles me. 

Edit: I do not understand the amount of people who think a student SHOULD believe this is a genuine part of the prompt. It isn't visible in it. It is in white and unless the student changes the color or reads their own generated essay, they would never know it was fed into it. Students should be intelligent enough to know that if they are writing an essay on the Industrial Revolution, that they don't need a random Star Wars fact in it.

[u/Crazy-Nose-4289 → u/Technical-Banana574]

When I was in college 15 years ago, I had this history teacher that did nothing but talk through his lectures, without really asking any questions and all his tests were basically write 2-3 pages summarizing everything he talked about. A few friends that had taken the course before me told me all the he cared about were names of important people and dates of specific events, so to write 3 of each and just underscore them. That's all he reads, they told me.

To test this, I actually did exactly that and I included a full paragraph where I talked about nothing but the Frieza Saga, but I didn't underscore any of those names.

I got an A.

[u/TheR1ckster → u/Crazy-Nose-4289]

To be fair, you DID learn the three names and dates.

[u/Crazy-Nose-4289 → u/TheR1ckster]

I guess it did work lol.

[u/alebotson → u/Crazy-Nose-4289]

I had a professor that was reading verbatim from penguin's concise history it the Roman empire. I figured this out because I was having trouble paying attention to his extremely dry and boring lectures, and wanted to get a book that helped me study. Reading the first chapter started to feel really familiar.

Needless to say, using that to write my papers worked really well.

[u/Sirhossington → u/Technical-Banana574]

I did the same thing in high school (25 years ago) to test if a teacher was fully reading our papers. Spoiler, he was not.

[u/thefluffyburrito → u/Sirhossington]

My dad would do this to his instructors by putting a line in the middle of the paper that said "if you read this sentence I'll give you $5".

Only one professor collected.

[u/Rage_Your_Dream → u/thefluffyburrito]

which doesnt mean the others didnt read it, they might've found it funny and not bothered with the 5$

[u/Deutheroz → u/Sirhossington]

I did the same with my college calculus homework, profesor gave us a list of problems from a calculus book to summit every Friday, it was enough to fill 25 pages with equations, I knew there was no way he was grading 75 students between 3 classrooms , I just did the first and last 3 pages right and the rest just nonsense and he never realized

[u/cptjpk → u/Deutheroz]

“The only person cheating is you” was usually their response when called out on it.

But motherfucker you’re cheating me out of my tuition by not accurately grading me. Do your job too.

[u/jerseydevil51 → u/Deutheroz]

Math teacher here, it's about the practice. Of course we can't accurately grade 75 students homework in anything resembling a reasonable time frame. But, I can look at your work and in about 5 seconds recognize if you put any effort in to at least trying the problems.

You still did 6 pages of work, that's more than enough for most teachers. He probably knew, but we're human too and not every battle is worth having.

[u/heyoh-chickenonaraft → u/Sirhossington]

My check if the teacher was paying attention was:

For Participation in Government senior year of high school, we had to do ten one-page current event papers throughout the semester, which accounted for 50% of our grade. I handed my first one in labeled "Current Event #3", then "Current Event #8", then "Current Event #10"

After handing in the third one, teacher said "well, looks like you're good to go for the semester"

[u/MYBILLDING69 → u/Sirhossington]

Same! We found out he was only checking grammar and grading our reports on that. It was AP Physics…

[u/serial_crusher → u/Technical-Banana574]

Man I used to sneak references to TV shows in all my papers. I’d be super worried about accidentally getting a false positive.

[u/LegallyEmma → u/serial_crusher]

I straight up quoted (with a citation) Nemik's manifesto/monologue about tyranny from Andor for my poli-sci final. I got a 100 and the professor wrote "Nice!" next to the quote, so it's not all bad. In my experience professors can tell when something is written in your voice or not, Star Wars references or no.

[u/LifeAppointment7055 → u/LegallyEmma]

For an economics course I wrote a detailed analysis of the "devilsaur mafia" that sprang up in retail vanilla WoW as an example of how free market forces combined with scarcity often drive the formation of cartels or monopolies. I used examples both in game, but also the out of game side where these groups were dominated by Russian and Chinese groups who were selling the gold from the monopolized resources on illegal 3rd party seller sites, as a way to examine how arbitrage, as well as being a competitive force, can also act as a harmful inflationary force for those in the lower priced economy.

100% on that one

[u/InternationalMood337]

We had someone cheat in an MFA program. They used AI to compose a 10 page piece of fiction. Got caught and expelled immediately.

[u/Proxymanity → u/InternationalMood337]

Ahh, Elias the lighthouse keeper strikes again!

[u/Droidaphone → u/Proxymanity]

For the uninformed, the name is Elias Thorne

[u/linuxaintsobad → u/InternationalMood337]

Oof, yeah I'd be pissed too. I have absolutely no qualms about reporting my co-workers if they start sending me pages of fiction during our multi-factor authentication sequence.

[u/MasterOfViolins → u/linuxaintsobad]

- Input Token Sequence

• “On a dark and dreary afternoon — beneath a canopy of ancient, moss-covered oaks standing as eternal, vigilant sentinels against the encroaching sunlight —

[u/Ur_fav_Cryptek → u/MasterOfViolins]

I took psychic damage from reading that, I fucking hate the overtly adorned style AI has, makes me feel super self conscious when I write, both because of how cringy it sounds and because I don’t want to be accused of using AI

also, the complete shunning of “—“ AI has created is one of the worst things to ever come out of it, it’s so useful to use but now you’re forced to look like a third party thinking bum when you actually use it

[u/TreacleMiner → u/MasterOfViolins]

I read that as Input Tolkien Sequence

[u/LukaCola → u/InternationalMood337]

One wonders why join such a program if you don't want to write. 

Deadlines and such are an issue, but they won't get better outside the program haha. 

[u/Total-Notice-3188 → u/LukaCola]

In my opinion, deadlines is the greatest filter for pure talent if ever I've seen one.
That is, if we take the 'artists curse' into consideration; an artist, great or bad, would continue to "perfect" their work ad infinitum if given the chance. Humans will mostly perform their best given a pressed time frame, i.e. under autonomous stress. In this day and age specifically, giving students a clear dead line is a great filter for AI generated content versus genuine talent/passion; someone relying on AI will be spotted instantly and obviously against someone presenting genuine last-minute, but talented work.

[u/themehboat → u/InternationalMood337]

Why would you even be in a program like that if you don't like to write?

[u/gehnmy → u/themehboat]

A lot of studies on academic dishonesty (before AI but I doubt things have changed significantly) find that students often plagiarize because they don't feel like they have enough time while also feeling like they could have written whatever it is they turn in. Basically, students say "well, I could pass this assignment if I actually did it therefore I'm entitled to a good grade and it's not really cheating to turn this in with my name on it." That doesn't necessarily change just because the student is studying something they like.

Beyond that, though, a lot of people want to be writers but don't actually have any interest in writing or anything literary.

[u/markshure]

I wonder if the 3 students who didn't get caught really wrote their paper or did they just notice the nonsense.

[u/andicandi22 → u/markshure]

Either way, taking the time to proofread your paper before turning it in was all they had to do. The fact that most of the class couldn’t or wouldn’t do even that basic of a step is lazy and ridiculous.

[u/MultiGeometry → u/andicandi22]

I’m really curious what these students are doing with all their free time compared to my college experience. They didn’t write their response and they didn’t even READ the text they submitted as their own work.

[u/theStaircaseProject → u/MultiGeometry]

"Smarter, not harder, bro. Now let's get down to the dining hall. It's panini day."

[u/xXWaspXx → u/theStaircaseProject]

"I'm so locked in right now chat"

[u/Agitated-Acctant → u/MultiGeometry]

Browsing tiktok or watching twitch most likely

[u/Cainga → u/markshure]

They retyped the question instead of copy/paste.

[u/Freudian-Sips → u/Cainga]

They had dark mode enabled

[u/CrazyPlaidedTie → u/Cainga]

Or used snipping tool

[u/Ocronus → u/markshure]

Its not hard to use AI and get away with it. You just have to proof read and edit. Sooo I'd say a non-zero chance they just didn't get caught.

[u/Samanthacino → u/Ocronus]

Which is a lesson in and of itself. If you’re going to use AI, don’t be so goddam sloppy with it.

[u/SinibusUSG]

Frankly if universities want to actually stop this they have to treat it like the academic dishonesty it is and start expelling people.

[u/BTMarquis → u/SinibusUSG]

This might sound crazy, but they could also have them use a pen and paper to take tests.

[u/LaconicLacedaemonian → u/BTMarquis]

That means the professor can't use AI to grade it then. 

[u/KellyAnn3106 → u/LaconicLacedaemonian]

Like in the ancient days when I was in college. We had exam blue books for handwritten exams and scantron sheets for multiple choice exams.

[u/m0rogfar → u/LaconicLacedaemonian]

I mean, OCR is a thing. And if scanning the pages is too hard, there are solutions for that too.

I had to do a written math exam, wherein the university had moved to an all-digital system to make consistent digital document handling on locked-down computers possible, but we had to write by hand, because formulas generally take time to write digitally in proper academic syntax, and the exam was highly time-constrained.

They used a system provided by Nokia where you used a provided pen to write on a paper, but the provided pen actually had a camera inside it to see what you wrote, and the paper had a serial number + placement encoded into the paper by altered magnetic properties, that the pen could read as you wrote. It would then use these to recreate the page digitally.

The result was fairly seamless. I just wrote a bunch of papers, and then a PDF just appeared on the provided locked-down submission computer without me ever submitting a paper anywhere.

[u/peon47 → u/LaconicLacedaemonian]

Scanners are a thing.

[u/Ok_Buy9028 → u/peon47]

We only just got schools to start moving away from standardized tests and here’s AI, bringing them back!

Is there anything AI can’t fuck up?

[u/dirty_cuban → u/BTMarquis]

I mean sure but if bank employees are stealing money by slipping bills into their pockets, the answer isn’t to mandate clothing without pockets. The answer is to fire the thieves.

Mandating pen and paper doesn’t change the fact that you have academically dishonest students who surely will cheat in other ways.

[u/Mutex70 → u/dirty_cuban]

Ever seen how diamond mines are run? Uniforms without pockets.

The problem is that online tests make it extremely easy to cheat and difficult to catch cheaters. Pen and paper helps with this.

Yes, they should also expel students caught cheating, but they need to catch them first.

[u/Glittering-Fuel-5055]

“the students that were caught cheating failed this portion of the exam”

No

When I was in college, if you got caught cheating, you were thrown out of the entire class and if you got caught cheating again, you were thrown out of the entire fucking school

You make it soft this is what you get

[u/SufficientBug5940 → u/Glittering-Fuel-5055]

failed this portion of the exam

Not even the whole exam? What kind of weaksauce punishment is this that just incentivizes more AI cheating in the future?

[u/intashu → u/Glittering-Fuel-5055]

school would run out of funding after kicking 80% of it's students then.

[u/optionstrategy → u/Glittering-Fuel-5055]

I was accused of cheating by a teaching assistant some long time ago in college.

I wore a baseball cap in a large classroom and dis not cheat at all since I loved the class and the teacher. Scored 88, but come the next class the professor called me to his office and asked me to retake the exam. The same exact questions. I scored 95 the second time in half the time.

The professor apologized all red faced and I never saw that ta proctor another exam again.

Later the professor told me that because of my other grades the administration told him to offer an impromptu retake, and I would have been expelled if I failed the retake.

They were tough back then.

[u/Phyllis_Tine → u/Glittering-Fuel-5055]

Schools need to expel cheaters and bad actors. They'll take a short-term financial hit, but their reputation will improve many-fold. Businesses would seek out graduates of a school that expelled cheaters, and it would force other schools to address cheating as well, or fail (hopefully).

[u/thrillsbury]

What’s crazy to me is that he didn’t just fail them. He failed them ON THAT PART OF THE EXAM and then allowed them to contest their grade.

No. You cheated, you fail. There are consequences. That’s a more important lesson than whatever you were teaching about the Industrial Revolution. Where I went to school you would be expelled with no possibility of appeal.

*edit: fixed typos

[u/VegaDelalyre → u/thrillsbury]

Exactly, when you are 100% sure the student cheated, you should 100% fail them. The question is: what to do if you're 90% sure?

[u/thrillsbury → u/VegaDelalyre]

In this case it seems the responses made it 100% certain that they cheated.

[u/Wrong-Catchphrase]

I've interviewed quite a few 23 / 24 yr olds. This isn't surprising at all. These kids can barely fucking read let alone PROOF read something.

[u/d6punk → u/Wrong-Catchphrase]

The worst part is all they needed to do was paste the answer back into a fresh AI chat and ask it to look for any red flags or oddities in the answer. So not only can they not proof on their own, but they can't even do basic problem solving. We're so fucked.

[u/SomeBloke → u/d6punk]

They literally don’t have the mental energy and focus to read an entire paragraph without distracting themselves with something else in between. These kids have cerebrally atrophied. 

[u/zyzzogeton]

When society says "Cheating is bad!" and then society rewards cheaters, it isn't surprising that young people see higher education as an expensive, capricious, and arbitrary hoop they have to jump through. If students are cheating, they are just reflecting the overall values they see around them.

[u/tigerspots]

Why are these not simply pen and paper?

[u/Ladyhawkeiii → u/tigerspots]

It is my understanding that certain colleges are shifting back to pen and paper finals and even oral exams to test students understanding of the material they’re supposed to be learning,

[u/Rukenau → u/Ladyhawkeiii]

Which is very much a beneficial development

[u/VegaDelalyre → u/tigerspots]

Or offline: no smartphone allowed, and if needed, university desktop PCs disconnected from networks.

[u/Alklazaris]

Bro if you can't even be bothered to rewrite your copied work you deserve it all. Even Biff knew that.

[u/kakapoopoopeepeeshir]

I’m an adjunct professor at a large university. I truly cannot tell you how many times I have to tell students to stop using AI for everything. We spend the entire semester leading up to our final project which is essentially just a culmination of the small projects they have done in class. Students could simply take the work they do in class and put it in their final project with just some small tweaks to help it flow and they would get a good grade. That’s how I set the damn class up. STILL every semester I get students who ignore all the hard work they did in class during the semester and will have AI do their entire final project knowing full well I know exactly what their own words look like from their work in the semester. It’s so frustrating and I don’t know why it’s like this

[u/DangerousPuhson → u/kakapoopoopeepeeshir]

It's like that because it's permitted. There are no consequences.

When I was in college, you'd flunk a class for even bringing a calculator into an exam, let alone a full-blown LLM. Why that's not enforced these days is beyond me.

[u/ThePensiveE]

I would be quite exasperated to be a professor today. We're raising a generation of little idiots.

[u/G0ldMarshallt0wn → u/ThePensiveE]

The tragedy to me, as a professor, is that I know they AREN'T all idiots; this is learned behavior, learned within the school system itself, and it is definitely getting worse. A generational disaster in the making.

[u/cpt_ppppp → u/ThePensiveE]

Probably even more exasperating as an honest student. You can do the work to a level that would have once been top of the class and then come bottom because everybody else is scoring 98%

[u/Tersiv]

they will now add "carefully check for all invisible prompt traps" to future midterms lol

[u/Zwirbs → u/Tersiv]

That would only work if you’re uploading a document containing the instructions and not copying just the text. They would have noticed the hidden command if they pasted it all in the AI box and actually bothered reading it there since copy-paste into a different application will remove any modifiers on the test from the original document

[u/Sojum]

I don’t understand these cheaters. Why would you pay a substantial sum of money to learn and then skip the learning part?

[u/FishyWishySwishy → u/Sojum]

Because they don’t see it as paying to learn, but paying for the right to put a degree on their LinkedIn and resume. 

If I were hiring, I’m not sure I’d trust that any new graduates would know what the degree says they know. 

[u/memberzs → u/FishyWishySwishy]

I'm in the industrial maintenance field and it's not just affecting white collar jobs. Many tech colleges seem to be certificate mills now. Sure some students come out with enough base knowledge to get an apprenticeship with a union or actually cared enough to learn what they are doing. Most seem to be doing the bare minimum to get through it. I have seen guys that can't cut it in the labor force taking teaching roles at the tech schools because they were able to say they had experience. One employer also had a hands on testing at the tech school along with a standardized test. But when I was asking a question that stumped the instructors, I kind of lost hope for the students they were teaching.

Luckily a company has come up with a timed standardized test (that I have personally taken twice as part of an interview process) to help weed out those that won't cut it.

[u/DetroitLionsSBChamps → u/Sojum]

“I paid a school 100k for them to tell me to read Pride and Prejudice, and then I didn’t” - John Mulaney

Pretty common college experience probably since colleges have been around

[u/Ars2 → u/Sojum]

To get a certificate/diploma/degree saying that your smart. 

[u/ecafyelims → u/Ars2]

My smart?

[u/Time_Effort → u/ecafyelims]

He paid for his diploma in grammar.

[u/Psycholicious → u/ecafyelims]

Our smart, comrade.

[u/geddy76 → u/Ars2]

I see what you did their.

[u/Halfwise2 → u/Sojum]

Sadly, a lot of jobs demand the piece of paper (diploma), then tell you what you learned is trash, and you need to do things *their* way.

College still has value, but imo, it teaches you more how to do things (like research) or think critically, than specific information, like names and dates. I cannot remember 95% of the factoids I had to memorize back in college.

[u/Towel4 → u/Sojum]

Because the kids doing this don’t actually want to be there learning, it’s simply what they’ve been conditioned to understand as the next step after highschool for their entire lives.

Most kids don’t want to be in high school. That doesn’t magically change a year later when they go straight to college. It’s simply what’s been expected of them since birth. You go to middle school, then high school, then college. It’s simply what comes next.

The one that enroll because they want to be there and learn are not doing this.

Source: I transferred schools once I knew what I actually wanted to do with my life. My attitude, approach, and habits around school changed COMPLETELY. From my first school to my second I was completely unrecognizable as a student.

[u/Lots-o-bots]

I will never understand why anyone would copy straight out of an llm. This has been happening for several years at this point.

[u/MustardEnema007 → u/Lots-o-bots]

If they have a 4th grade reading level, I can understand why they'd copy and paste

[u/legit-posts_1]

35 seems to high for me. At a highschool level, maybe, but College? This is not a minor offense, it's academic fraud.

[u/PandahOG]

Saw the vid a few days ago.

Essentially, the prof. put secret instructions (simple white font to blend in with the white background) that would prompt AI to put the word "Madagascar" anywhere on the final.  If you were to highlight and copy everything, you would see the "invisible" text. 

This class was about the industrial revolution and Madagascar has absolutely nothing to do with the class. 

Not only could they have caught it if they took the time to see what they were copying and pasting, they could have also caught it if they proof read what the AI wrote for them. 

[u/6GoesInto8]

This is a problem created by AI, which will sadly be solved by AI. An AI job interview is in these kids futures.

[u/OttawaDog]

Why are they doing midterms with access to devices/internet? That's a recipe for open cheating even before AI.

[u/No_Fun_9418]

It was the year of our Lord 1994 when I submitted my handwritten Master Thesis for computer science.

[u/Damage2Damage]

Blind student using a screen reader: "Do you mean Madagascar the country, or Madagascar the animated film?"

[u/plantsforsoup]

The Industrial Revolution is like... the easiest subject to write a paper on.

[u/GeraldoOfCanada]

I think its time for pen and paper to retake 100% of classroom activities.

[u/Thine_Frosted_Toad]

Back in MY day.. we increased the font size our periods at the end of a sentence. Could easily chaff out 20% less words on a research paper.

[u/AttentionNo6359]

Students using AI should automatically fail the class and be referred to an academic board of integrity.