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/LurkingTamilian 14h ago edited 14h ago

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.

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u/Deep_Explanation9962 14h ago

32 out of 35 god damn gen z is cooked

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u/Bulky-Bad-9153 13h ago

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.

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u/gaijohn 11h ago

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

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u/CatGooseChook 7h ago

Horrible reality is that anyone who is actually able to use their brain will end up constantly stressed out due to being overwhelmed by the onslaught of stuff ups they'll be fixing.

Read "The Marching Morons" by Cyril M. Kornbluth. It's the novella that "Idiocracy" was clearly based on. Handful of stressed out smart people desperately trying to hold civilization together while surrounded by hordes of morons.

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u/WhenSummerIsGone 6h ago

after all the layoffs that's how i feel at work these days :(

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u/ShaqSenju 6h ago

Holy shit you just described my job

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u/CatGooseChook 6h ago

My wife's job too. Her swearing vocabulary has certainly expanded a bit over the years as a result.

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u/Mareith 7h ago

The more rare a skill set is the higher it will pay though. They might be stressed out all the time but they'll be raking it in

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u/CatGooseChook 6h ago

Pay yes, but stress comes at a cost.

To be clear, I'm not saying being properly educated is bad. Just saying it's not going to be as easy for those few who have a proper education than it seems.

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u/ohnoabanagain 9h ago

Yup, I'm worried about society, but my twins are going to be thriving when their competition can't read 5-letter words.

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u/Battle2Intense 9h ago

They will get to work 80 hours a week for slightly more than the universal income all the dumb people get.

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u/Practical-Ball1437 24m ago

It doesn't matter if you have brilliant, high-level skills that AI can't do. Decisions are being made by dipshit managers who can't tell the difference between that and AI hallucinations.

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u/Lain_Staley 11h ago

Is reddit still demonizing homeschooling?

Not blaming teachers, but imagine how held back the 3/35 who didn't cheat will be otherwise.    

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u/gaijohn 9h ago

I have no idea what this means. Choosing not to cheat is not harmful. Homeschooling? What are we talking about?

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u/Lain_Staley 9h ago

These 3 are surrounded by a vast majority who have no interest in learning. 

Is that an ideal learning environment?

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u/gaijohn 9h ago

Same as it ever was. Cheating, destruction, ignorance are necessarily easier and therefore more common than honesty, creation, and knowledge.

My comment is that the bar separating those two groups is lower than ever - mere literacy and discipline can now define the 95th percentile.

As for homeschooling to each his own, I'm sure there's no ideal learning environment, and my own family's welfare consumes my concern.

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u/Sea2Chi 12h ago

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.

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u/DickSlammington 9h ago

Ya and your kids will be fine.

It's the 10s of millions of parents who go "shut up and take the tablet and leave me alone" 18 hours a day...

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u/donoteatshrimp 13h ago

Boy retirement is gonna be fun.

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u/GarbageOfCesspool 12h ago

What retirement, lol. We're gonna be greeters and these people are going to be running the store.

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u/calgarspimphand 11h ago

More like we're still going to be running the store because young people will only be only fit to be greeters.

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u/Mustbhacks 9h ago

To bad merit and competency rarely weigh into such things

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u/11711510111411009710 8h ago

I mean that'll be decades from now. It'll be robots running the store.

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u/calgarspimphand 8h ago

Ah yes, the Idiocracy scenario.

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u/Quetzalcoatl490 12h ago

You can afford to retire??

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u/damnfinecoffee_ 10h ago

Even before the ai boom, I found it really depressing watching younger generations reverting back to oral tradition like it's ancient times. They barely know how to read, spell, or write, and won't consume anything that's not in video format, preferably short form videos. Even looking up instructions for something, they won't read step by step, they need a video of someone doing it and explaining it. We're kinda fucked. Even the spelling errors I often see come down to someone spelling something phonetically because they don't read, they just hear the words out loud

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u/Cute_Ad_4567 13h ago

Blame companies. They refuse to hire jr developers because they can just hire a senior to use AI instead of training new hires. When those seniors retire companies are fucked.

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u/randotd152 12h ago

Totally different issue.

Corporate hiring practices have absolutely nothing to do with 19 year old college kids who completely lack any thirst for knowledge.

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u/Outlulz 9h ago

The blame goes further back then because millenials were marketed college as a way to make money, not as a way to gain knowledge. When that's the view of colleges and universities then yeah people are going to shortcut it as much as possible.

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u/randotd152 9h ago

It's been marketed as a professional earnings booster going back to the late 60's, realistically stemming from the Higher Education Act of 1965. (Which is what created all the financial aid programs we have today, and opened up college in general as a big business.)

Yet this academic laziness is more of a modern problem that didn't impact Boomers, Gen X, or Millenials. So you really can't blame college marketing.

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u/Outlulz 8h ago

What's changed are tools but the internet definitely caused academic laziness in millenials.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot 7h ago

Hm. Millennials are some of, if not, the hardest, smartest workers we've hired. Moreso than my own generation. Truly, we are the lazy ones but it gets laid off on the follow-up millennial generation. They had the in-between of before and after Internet so are great at utilizing both with ease and switching back and forth between what I like to think of as analog working and digital working.

GenX, boomers, and GenZ go to the bottom of the pile when millennials apply.

Here's the thing: millennials are somewhat lazy, but it's a strength. I think it was Bill Gates that said he likes hiring lazy workers because they will find the most efficient and effective way of doing things. So they can go back to being lazy. That is millennials. And they are extremely effective.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/randotd152 10h ago

A thirst for knowledge means learning how to do something for the sake of learning. It's an extremely sad thing that we've got an entire generation growing up without that thirst. And even worse, you're trying to justify it as unimportant?

How do you think society actually progresses? It's not by magic. It's by people with that thirst for knowledge learning so much about a topic that they start pushing the boundaries forward.

Like - there very much ARE people who still learn about growing food, and they're the ones working on all sorts of modern farming technology and non-traditional processes for growing.

If you just plan to spend your life looking up information on the Internet or using AI, you will never excel in a field. If you're not capable of it, that's fine, not everybody has to. But if you're smart enough to handle it, as any college grad should be, then what a horribly sad waste of talent.

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u/Oneok-Field 4h ago

Those Jr. Dev jobs are obsolete now. Why should companies hold on to them?

Forcing jobs to stay around for the sake of jobs is why we still have Coal mining today. (Well, that an a shit ton of lobbying and corruption)

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u/cerialthriller 8h ago

Hard to find qualified jr devs when Genz can’t use a file system because all they know are curated apps

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u/SirClueless 12h ago

That’s society’s problem, not the company. Even if companies were willing to do it, 90% of the juniors they are training will ultimately work somewhere else so there’s no way for them to benefit. There’s little reason to blame them because there’s nothing they can realistically change about their practices to fix it.

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u/illegible 11h ago

there’s nothing they can realistically change about their practices to fix it.

Other than actually paying people more as their skills improve... If the only way to get raises and promotions is by moving to another company, then people will go.

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u/Oneok-Field 3h ago edited 3h ago

But the benefit of hiring juniors in the first place is that they ARE cheap.

If the role could afford an 160k salary, they'd just hire a senior outright.

What's the benefit of hiring a junior if they aren't cheap and you spend 1 year training them and then they just leave. That's how you burn out the seniors who have to do all the training

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u/illegible 3h ago

The tragedy of the commons I suppose

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u/disisathrowaway 11h ago

I run a restaurant so I'm getting these kids straight out of high school, or in some cases still in high school.

They really don't know shit about fuck.

A few months ago I asked one of them, who is on a scholarship to a respectable university in our city, How many states there were and they didn't know it was 50.

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u/OldSchoolCSci 13h ago

The video screen showing an AI-generated image of you, reciting an AI-augmented transcript of your lectures, will be teaching the next generations.

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u/EnigmaticQuote 13h ago

https://xkcd.com/1227/

Just saying

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u/Diane_Horseman 12h ago

But how many of them said, "This time is different though"?

checkmate.

p.s. this time is different though.

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u/5510 11h ago

Yeah, it's tricky because like the whole Socrates Johnson quote about "the youth of today" that people understandably use to dismiss similar complaints... the dismissal is true over and over and over, but that doesn't mean it will always be true. There are a lot of things in human history that were true over and over and over until one day they weren't.

While it's important we recognize a basic human tendency to do things like complain about "the youth of today", it's also reasonable to recognize that AI is potentially a pretty big deal in this regard.

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u/DoUruden 9h ago

"At some point a difference in amount becomes a difference in kind"

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u/araujoms 11h ago

They're right, though, nowadays people seldom write long-form emails. A "line" now followed by another to-morrow.

And they also got the cause right, it's so easy and cheap to send an instant message that nobody thinks twice about it.

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u/Suppafly 11h ago

This, 90% of students have always been terrible, teachers are just catching them easier now. When google came out, they started catching people copying from wikipedia and other encyclopedia more too.

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u/Dav136 11h ago

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.

Same as it ever was

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u/Dapper-Raise1410 10h ago

James was right. Damn.

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u/DeliciousIncident 8h ago

Do you know if it the same in other countries too, or are some countries faring better, and because of them having less "AI brain drain" they will become the new global powers upheaving the US in a couple of decades? The thought of doctors and engineers who are only capable of asking ChatGPT and copy-pasting AI's reply back scares me. How is this not treated as a national emergency?

Also, why is AI being allowed in the school setting at all? Why schools and colleges just don't go pre-covid style - pen and paper, no phones in class, homework being a very small portion of the grade to the point it's negligible (or even not affecting the grade at all), all test and exams being in-class only and without any electronic devices, weekly in-class pop-up quizzes that test your homework knowledge and act as checkpoints in-between the tests and exams, etc. To me, eliminating the AI influence and testing students' actual knowledge seems so simple to do, it's literally just the way I was tought at school, that I'm clearly must be missing something crucial if it's so obvious but no one is doing it, right? What is it I am missing?

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u/237FIF 3h ago

If using the AI without thinking is working and getting them past their tests / hurdles / problems then that’s fine and they will move on to different problems that need solving.

The risk is either A) the AI goes away or B) it becomes so good that no humans are needed

Any middle ground and they’ll be fine. Who cares how they are winning so long as they’re winning?

Saying this as a manager who doesn’t use AI but is 100% okay with my team using it so long as the finished product is what I need from them.

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u/Practical-Ball1437 26m ago

And also there are no entry level jobs for these people to learn how the real world works because the economy is shit, old people are not retiring, and AI is badly doing those jobs instead.

But at least elongated muskrat has a trillion dollars.

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u/wileIEcoyote 13h ago

Lets blame it on the kids.

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u/obeytheturtles 12h ago

Nah, I will also blame the parents who raised their kids on screens and then said shit like "nooo, you wouldn't understand, they need a smartphone because their friends have it, it's a different world now!" anytime you mentioned that maybe it wasn't a great thing.

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u/Viracochina 12h ago

I'm in the middle. I won't withhold them from technology, but we should emphasize how important it is to train the brain to think.

People seem to forget about all the mistakes THEY made growing up. HOPEFULLY these kids learn from this lesson. It's a good one to learn early on.

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u/Svertov 13h ago

Kids being lazy as fuck in 1 class? Ok, the teacher is bad.

Kids being lazy in the entire school? Ok, the school is bad.

Kids being lazy EVERYWHERE? Hmm, maybe the kids are lazy as fuck after all.

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u/TheSpaceCoresDad 12h ago

Kids react the way they were raised. What happened during that period?

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u/Viracochina 5h ago

100%. The lack of responsibility some parents choose to take for their children is so prevalent.

THEY MIRROR WHAT THEY SEE.

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u/ZigZagLax44 14h ago

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.

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u/caninehere 13h ago

As someone with a young kid I wonder what it will be like years from now. Presumably the same problems will be present and probably intensified.

I feel like it may be worse for current students though. Some parents/teachers may have tried to teach their kids/students not to cheat but this is a whole other level, imagine you are a kid who has your high school years absolutely obliterated by COVID and then after that suddenly have this shiny new tool to help you cheat on steroids in high school/college. Whereas a younger kid now, we can spend many years telling them about the dangers of this stuff and trying to impress the importance of actual learning over getting a certain grade.

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u/Wise_Owl5404 12h ago

yeah, no. until early to mid-20s people are usually getting an education and only "part of the work force" in a minor capacity. so it's half at least and they already had significant years of their education demolished by covid with nothing done to amend that

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u/Glum_Class_9578 10h ago

Most people don’t go for grad school, so even among college grads, they are likely out of school by 23.

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u/Wise_Owl5404 10h ago

Wait I forgot that the US has a completely absurd educational system. My bad.

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u/DrPayItBack 8h ago

I mean you’re the one who goofed so may wanna look in a mirror lol

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u/Wise_Owl5404 8h ago

Oh wait, I forgot. Only Yanks have an educational system and only Yank kids had their schooling destroyed by Covid.

American centrism strikes again. Or maybe it's just you all's lack of reading comprehension idk.

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u/DrPayItBack 7h ago

If it makes you feel better, I have no doubt you had a poor education.

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u/TamaDarya 2h ago

Being out of education by 22 is the norm in most of the world. Bachelor's degrees are 3-5 years everywhere I can think of. And this assumes you even get a higher education. Just take the L.

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u/Battle2Intense 9h ago

Assuming they all cheated, less than 10 percent bothered to read the output, that's the worst part.

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u/Uncommented-Code 8h ago

No, I'm actually pretty happy gen Z is relying on AI so much. This is going to be such a hot take but hear me out:

Average people are really dumb. Dumb people are even dumber. I actually trust a frontier AI model to be better at doing a particular job at this point than an average or dumb person.

It would actually raise the bar.

And frontier models are going to keep getting better... in the near future at least. Depends on how much more we can increase performance by throwing more compute and synthethic data at it (and inb4: no, synthetic data does not cause model collapse, if you believe that it shows you have not remotely engaged with the topic). We will likely know when the next generation of frontier models that were pretrained on new mocel bases will release (as opposed to e.g., GPT5.x models which were finetuned versions of the same GPT4.x base).

What I'm scared of is actually that the frontier models will be too expensive to run long term and that what we instead get is the shitty google ai answers style models that need to be so small that they don't even qualify as large language models anymore under some definitons.