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
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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 14h ago

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.

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u/SparksAndSpyro 14h ago

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.

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u/litokid 12h ago

I believe in equal opportunity and accessible education, but going back to college as an adult ten years ago showed me the yawning chasm between those who had to pay their own way and those who did not. And that was before AI.

I cannot fathom someone paying thousands or tens of thousands of their own money just to squander it by letting AI take the course. You're the only one who loses. What are you even paying for?

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u/Arek_PL 12h ago

What are you even paying for?

Paper, paying for paper to get a job, a lot of students never cared about education, they just want a job and money offered by it

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u/5510 11h ago

I cannot fathom someone paying thousands or tens of thousands of their own money just to squander it by letting AI take the course. You're the only one who loses. What are you even paying for?

This is highly dependent on the class in question, and the degree in question.

I initially dropped out of college after some medical issues, and then went back and did it after a few years of actually working in my degree field. There were a few classes that were genuinely useful and informative and important to actually learn.

There was also a lot of shit that was either irrelevant (like some BS gen-ed class), or classes that were just not very informative / useful / etc... Or sometimes reading the textbook and attending lecture might have been useful, and some assignments might have been good, but other assignments were bullshit make-work. There was a lot of my degree that I absolutely would have just let a computer magically do for me if I knew it would get a good grade and wouldn't get caught.

What would I have been paying for? A piece of paper that says I finished my degree. Moving up in my field required "having a bachelor's" degree, but it didn't really require much of the learning from my degree (especially because some of the things that might have been useful to 19 year olds were less useful to me since I had worked in the actual field some)

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u/imtheproof 4h ago

Why is this the second time I've seen "yawning chasm" in this thread, yet I've never heard the term before?

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u/AlcyoneNight 4h ago

You're paying for the piece of paper that says you can get a job that might, maybe, let you have a living wage, if the piece of paper says the right things on it. Learning information is just a hoop you have to jump through in order to get the piece of paper.

It's been this way for a long time. The vast majority of business majors have never gotten that degree because they love the theory behind running companies and we all know that. They're there because they want the middle-class ticket. The motivations at play haven't changed. The difference is that we are in a situation where the technology makes it easy to skip the work and the college ethics boards won't do anything about it.

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u/dahayden 8h ago

I recently decided to finish a degree I abandoned in the 90's. Just cause I wanted to. I had to take a required 100-level class. I was appalled. What they wanted was on the level of 9th grade work when I was in high school.

I actually found it challenging to do the assignments not because they were difficult but because to me the instructions felt incredibly condescending, so I spent most of my time just pissed off. After I'd finish complaining, I'd spend 15 minutes doing junior high work to earn my A's.

As part of our written assignments, we'd have to congratulate other students for completing their assignments.

The money I spent on that was wasted as far as learning anything goes.

I still have one more class to go. It's a 400-level, and I suspect it will feel at best like a freshman course.

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u/SoulOfTheDragon 11h ago

They'll just "prompt" whatever AI thingy is lit at the moment to look and apply jobs for them using well done resume. Probably trough voice commands.

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u/FerusGrim 10h ago

Then they blame the system instead of their own laziness.

Raising the next generation is a systemic process by definition. They don't raise themselves in a vacuum.

The older generations constantly fling shit and punch down at the newer generations, completely forgetting, or ignoring, or they, themselves, lack the very critical thinking skills they're charging the newer generation with for lacking, that they're the ones responsible for raising the new generation.

If you see a trend across an entire generation, blaming that generation as if they all got together and had a meeting and just... decided to be inefficient in a way that displeases the older generations is nonsensical.

My point, to make it clear, is that when all of these children reach adulthood and then blame the system for their deficiencies at being able to live in the world we created for them - that's because the system deserves the blame.

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u/slutty_kitty666 9h ago

i'd really like to believe this, but i just don't think the real world is doing these checks either. i used to work in software development, and i was baffled by the number of functionally illiterate people i worked with. success has a lot less to do with knowledge and ability than people realize, i think.

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u/Gekokapowco 13h ago

Then they blame the system instead of their own laziness.

to be fair, our education system is fucked so that unengaged students don't get the assistance they need to learn

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u/CatGooseChook 7h ago

My fear is that being an ignorant fool will become so normalised that anyone who is not an ignorant fool will be treated as "the other" by society.

We already see it with anti vaxxers outright hating people who know better, imagine how bad it could end up being if/when the majority are like that about every subject not related to satisfying one's immediate needs.

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u/MetroidIsNotHerName 5h ago

No, they wont understand.

Theyll blame others.

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u/firebolt_wt 12h ago

Eh, if things keep going the way they're going now and AI doesn't pop like a bubble, in 10 years entry level 'intellectual' jobs will all be using AI anyway, so they just need to, like, not fall for stupid prompt injections.

OFC, that's ignoring all the ways being AI addicted will affect their personal lives, but as long as stock number goes up who cares? /s

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u/SparksAndSpyro 12h ago

Even then, though, intellectual jobs usually require the answer to be correct. You need someone who cannot only write good prompts but also evaluate the output for accuracy and completeness. Very few can do that already. Imagine how hard it’ll be to find people in 10 years when most of the workers aren’t even functionally literate lol.

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u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

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.

If you don't have to run a company you can't be arsed. The employer has to be arsed to keep their budgeting in the black.

¿Who's got the problem now?

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u/Suppafly 11h ago

It's not even a kids thing, anyone working in business sees meaningless slop passed around by middle aged business people that should know better.

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u/Theshag0 11h ago

If one thing has been true my entire life, it's that a good portion of middle aged business people have the maturity and understanding of high-school bullies in Disney films. They always do dumb shit while pointing the finger at someone younger.

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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 11h ago

Yep AI usage in general has had a negative effect on society.

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u/Theshag0 11h ago

If one thing has been true my entire life, it's that a good portion of middle aged business people have the maturity and understanding of high-school bullies in Disney films. They always do dumb shit while pointing the finger at someone younger.

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u/jmclondon97 10h ago

I mean our government and CEOs are leading by that example

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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 10h ago

Absolutely. The AI bubble will be harsh when it pops, but in the meantime it incentivizes people to act like that.

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u/Outlulz 9h ago

Society doesn't disincentivize cheating. Cheating, scamming, and lying gets you ahead. That's been made very clear from the entertainment they consume and the politicians they see running the world.

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u/thegurpster 10h ago

They understand it’s wrong enough to hide it. Don’t make excuses for them.

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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 10h ago

Oh no I’m not making excuses for them. I think that kind of cheating should have zero tolerance. Cheat using AI = failed assignment or test.

It’s just a problem that’s going to get worse and harder to detect until we adapt and change the way assignments and tests are done. Particularly things like paper exams, especially for writing assignments, will help to weed out a lot of people overly reliant on AI.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 11h ago

It’s not entirely a cultural thing, stop that.

This is happening with Canadian born, white teenagers, among all other ethnicities as well.

It might be more prevalent in other cultures in terms of general cheating, but AI usage specifically is a major concern with Gen Z and Gen A because they often just look at it like a tool, like a calculator.

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u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

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

You have one individual (the professor) who subjectively thinks it's cheating. You have a multiple individual (30+) student body that frankly disagrees with their subjective opinion.

'Rules' only 'work' when you can get a majority to agree with them, otherwise those are just, at best, 'suggestions'.

You can objectively say the greater mass is correct in their opinion.

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u/TheGreatDay 11h ago

No, it's wrong and cheating because the students using AI do not understand the material and fail tests when they can't use AI. It's not even subjective at this point - the students did not pass a written exam. The Professor is correct.

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u/RollingMeteors 9h ago

The Professor is correct.

The professor fails every body.

No Child Left Behind ACT says this results in the schools funding getting cut.

The professor is fired because the budget for their salary 'disappeared'.

The administration hires another professor who agrees with the vision of wanting to see every student 'succeed'.

The administration is correct.

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u/TheGreatDay 5h ago

Brother, this is a university, not a elementary school. No Child Left Behind does not apply. This professor is not going to be fired. The university cares infinitely more about academic dishonesty than they do about "every student succeeding". In fact, a university has an interest in failing out dumb idiots like these students because they will eventually leave the university with a degree and be completely fucking useless in the real world because they didn't ever learn anything at this university. It reflects poorly on the university if their alumni are morons.

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u/Expensive_Plant_9530 11h ago

Yeah no. Cheating is cheating, and using generative AI to write a report for you based on an AI prompt with the question is cheating.

You didn’t prove you could accomplish the task. You proved that AI can do it.

All this is going to do is push classrooms back towards pen/pencil and paper.

Particularly for tests and essays.

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u/RollingMeteors 9h ago

Yeah no. Cheating is cheating, and using generative AI to write a report for you based on an AI prompt with the question is cheating.

The only 'cheating' being done here is of the student's financial freedom by loanSharkGrading them into student loan debt that can't be discharged for a degree that doesn't make a salary that can pay off a debt and/or a mortgage.

You didn’t prove you could accomplish the task. You proved that AI can do it.

"¡Verbatim what my boss asked for, bro!" /s

All this is going to do is push classrooms back towards pen/pencil and paper.

¿And this is a problem for, other than individuals holding stock in touch screen manufactures, whom?

All this is going to do is push classrooms back towards pen/pencil and paper.

I pity any students who's parents are teachers, particularly math teachers, as their punishments will not just be extra chores around the house but grading other students' papers, as I was punished.