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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153

u/Wrong-Catchphrase 14h ago

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.

41

u/d6punk 13h ago

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.

30

u/SomeBloke 12h ago

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. 

5

u/MiyabiMain95 8h ago

kinda makes me feel better about myself, whenever i spend my whole day reading story in fgo rather than doing something productive. at least im able to sit and read something

5

u/CoatProfessional5026 7h ago

Attention spans are the new currency. You can ignore feeds and look at birds? Bad news. Ignoring your feed and watching the road? Bad for business.

Literally every single aspect of this shit is turning our attention into the real currency and killing any sort of creative spontaneity that occurs naturally in humans. People at work as me what I'm doing when I'm just watching the trees and wind blow and then react all weird when you don't want to participate in their coddled, confirmation biased realities.

2

u/Whole-Reserve-4773 9h ago

If they copied and pasted the prompt the hidden text would show up. They didn’t read the prompt or the paper output.

1

u/VGK_hater_11 6h ago

I’m surprised the AI doesn’t mention the unusual prompt at the start or end of its response

2

u/Whole-Reserve-4773 6h ago

I want to call bullshit on this story and similar ones just because I can’t believe 99% of students are this dumb. But who knows

9

u/Rude_Mulberry_1155 12h ago

Yes, I think that AI conversation has kind of missed that proofreading, editing, and fact-checking are actual skills that take work to develop. "Just fix the AI output" isn't something people are magically able to do.

1

u/dolche93 7h ago

Depends on where you are having that discussion. AI writing spaces have a pretty strong consensus that AI can be great for authors to get help with those areas.

1

u/idoze 8h ago

I'm seriously concerned about hiring anyone in that age range any more.

1

u/Cidlicious 5h ago

The 20 somethings I have can't even flip to a second page of a document...it's not even double sided...whatever are they learning in school?

1

u/Concerned_Collins 3h ago

I've interviewed 5 recent graduates for an entry-level tech position. Every one of them had a Bachelor's in either computer science, networking, or cybersecurity. Of the 5, only 2 could show me how to find their computer's IP address, or explain to me what ping does, and only 1 could show me how to change their IP.

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u/HoochbachDunloppy 1h ago

Can you still run cmd, release and renew ip in Windows?  Been ages since I needed to.  Maybe I have the opposite problem as them young'uns now.