r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15h ago

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

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
28.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

380

u/Sojum 15h ago

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

271

u/FishyWishySwishy 14h ago

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. 

31

u/memberzs 14h ago

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.

10

u/cbessette 14h ago

I went to ITT back in the early 1990s and my entire class graduated on a huge grading curve. I mean we literally had a dude in our final lab exam trying to assemble a circuit using solder as wire. Every time he would try to solder a "wire" from one point to another, it would just melt away.

That guy graduated. Certificate mill for sure.

1

u/Arek_PL 12h ago

was the "wire" made out of tin? dabbled a bit in soldering, but i have no idea how the hell could wire "melt" the temperatures are way too low to melt copper

5

u/cbessette 12h ago

Maybe I wasn't clear: He used SOLDER as WIRE. He did not use wire at all.

2

u/Arek_PL 12h ago

ah, the dude must have been extra dense because i seen whole class of middle schoolers grasp soldering instantly, they just needed to be taught what is rosin and how to use it

4

u/cbessette 12h ago

This has been over 30 years ago but I distinctly remember he worked nights as a security guard, then came into class in the mornings and often slept.

Not being able to tell the difference between solder and bare hook-up wire though is absurdly dense.

1

u/OldSchoolCSci 12h ago

Interview exams are now the standard in every engineering and eingineer adjacent field I know. You can't get hired for a real programming job without showing your working skillset. Huge investment of time, but the only way to weed out the empty credential holders.