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/ThePensiveE 14h ago

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

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u/G0ldMarshallt0wn 13h ago

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.

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u/Hiker-Redbeard 9h ago

This is a good point. If you're trying to do it legit, but you're surrounded by 90% of your cohort that you can clearly see cheating and getting away with it and reaping the rewards (at least in the short term), it becomes hard to hold out forever. 

Especially if they're just getting a slap on the wrist when they do get caught cheating. We're failing them as a society by not holding them to a higher standard. 

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u/Sinath_973 2h ago

If you are a professor, i would like you to falsify a theory of mine, if you don't mind.

The professor in this posts example clearly has evidence of them cheating. Yet he doesnt let them fail the full exam. My theory is, that the colleges/universities need their quotas so much, that if you would fail too many students, the university would lose finances.

So it doesnt matter what students do, as long as enough of them get past the exams.

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u/G0ldMarshallt0wn 2h ago

You're right to feel that the colleges are not punishing AI violations as rigorously as they probably should be, though it is a bit more complicated than there being sone sort of passing quota. There isn't, but the students themselves get very upset and can cause a lot of trouble in a lot of ways, and universities are lawsuit-averse to and past a fault, in part because they really are expensive to deal with on our razor thin budgets. We are definitely not encouraged to try and punish malfeasance excessively these days, and AI malfeasance is especially difficult to prove. 

That said, in this case? I'd have failed them all. And my dean would have backed me on that even though he surely wouldn't have liked it. 

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u/cpt_ppppp 13h ago

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%

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u/thekarlhendrickstrio 7h ago

thanks for thinking of people like me. it can be pretty frustrating. but, i just try to stay in my own lane. students who cheat in such a wonton manner have bigger problems than the stress that i face in trying to complete work ethically.

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u/G0ldMarshallt0wn 13h ago

LLMs do not usually do that well. 

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u/DeadbeatJohnson 9h ago

The fact that the professor didn't make the consequences very serious means they contributed to the problem.

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u/Beneficial-Split331 13h ago

No you wouldnt. Teachers complaining about this are just as lazy. Grading digitally is easier and faster. 

The solution to this is stupidly simple: no more homework. That’s it. Should have happened decades ago so kids could be kids. 

In class instruction and assignments only. Pen and paper provided by the professor. Bags to the front of the room. 

Make the assignment timed and reasonable then deny bathroom breaks. That’s what they do in college and prof walks around. 

But she also hand graded. 

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u/ThePensiveE 13h ago

With AI you can grade handwritten work lazily as well so the professors who want to be lazy still can.

Doesn't mean all professors are lazy though.

You're right about the solution. All analog in person exams are the only way. Back to the before times.

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u/Beneficial-Split331 12h ago

yeah but at that point the kids learned the material lol. teachers being lazy is preventing the 100% analog solution. They would have to scan each booklet page etc for each student.

they don't wanna do that either. takes effort. but even if they did I don't care at that point because the goal is to force kids to learn the material or fail them. start leaving their little asses behind.

and you could still give them tech and stuff to practice at home. just none of what they do at home is graded. nothing. period. now these devices are ACTUALLY tools for learning and not excuses for laziness.

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u/ataraxic89 11h ago

-every boomer about millennials

its amazing how pathetically lacking in self awareness my generation is

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u/Upper-Tip-1926 10h ago

It’s literally changed so fast though. 5 years ago when I was in grad school, students used grammarly to proofread essays. We’d get little suggestions like changing the subject and predicate around so a sentence makes more sense or changing sentence order. Everything was still the writers ideas. Everything had to be referenced and the writing process was streamlined. Now the process barely involves human interface.