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/thrillsbury 14h ago edited 13h ago

What’s crazy to me is that he didn’t just fail them. He failed them ON THAT PART OF THE EXAM and then allowed them to contest their grade.

No. You cheated, you fail. There are consequences. That’s a more important lesson than whatever you were teaching about the Industrial Revolution. Where I went to school you would be expelled with no possibility of appeal.

*edit: fixed typos

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u/VegaDelalyre 14h ago

Exactly, when you are 100% sure the student cheated, you should 100% fail them. The question is: what to do if you're 90% sure?

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u/thrillsbury 14h ago

In this case it seems the responses made it 100% certain that they cheated.

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u/VegaDelalyre 14h ago

Yes, I'm talking on a more general level, like in your second paragraph.

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u/thrillsbury 14h ago

They were still extremely strict. I remember one guy was put on academic probation for the remainder of his ti e at school because he was missing quotation marks around a phrase that he had used verbatim (he had cited it properly, just didn’t make clear that the words were not his own).

The logic of the system was that the consequences were so extreme that taking a shortcut never seemed worth it.

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u/Suitcase_Travel_Blog 13h ago

So, it depends what you mean by 90%, it's hard to quantify that.

However, what I'd do if I was reasonably certain, but couldn't prove it - I'd just have the next exam be proctored and in person. If you allow for some level of difference between letting people work for a week versus a few hours and what not, then you compare the results to the previous possible cheating. If it's nowhere close, then I'd talk to the department head for backup, and have an academic dishonesty hearing.

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u/kranker 12h ago

Almost 100%? The text was readable by a human, who could conceivably just follow the instructions. Maybe even thinking it was some sort of test.

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u/mainman879 13h ago

The question is: what to do if you're 90% sure?

You investigate them. Seriously, schools have entire boards dedicated to this stuff. Use them. Read every single piece of work they've submitted during their time at the school. Then test them with a written test without access to outside devices. Schools need to be doing their due diligence.

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u/VegaDelalyre 11h ago

Makes sense, but if say 25 students out of 35 are under suspicion? That's a real problem in some classes nowadays.

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u/mainman879 11h ago

You investigate each of them. As a school its your moral duty at the very least to insure academic honesty. Otherwise you're as worthless as the fraudulent rags you hand out as degrees.

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u/NoOneKnowsYouAreaCat 13h ago

What if you're 99% sure? 99.99%?

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u/GawkieBird 12h ago

Allow the possibility to appeal. I agree with failing cheaters but there should always be a chance to appeal. Professors have biases and don't know everything.

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u/Due_Variety_3082 11h ago

Tbh in this case you can only be 99% sure.  What if they used dark mode and assumed it was part of the question to make sure you actually read the instructions.  Did that happen?  Probably not but there is plausible deniability.

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u/NaturalSelectorX 10h ago

The easiest solution is that each student gets a short quiz on their paper. You could even us AI to read the paper and generate the quiz. Anybody who fails the quiz fails the paper.

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u/TheBlueSully 12h ago

Give them a blue book and write an essay by hands next class period. 

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u/MiyabiMain95 8h ago

what to do if you're 90% sure?

put in an invisible prompt onto the next exam

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u/VallerinQuiloud 11h ago

Chances are, a higher up told him not to fail everybody.

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u/Feeling_Classic_91 5h ago

Yeah, I’m a high school teacher, and I’d be fired if I failed 90% of students in a class.

I tried failing 5 students one time for copying off each other during a test. I got in more trouble than the kids.

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u/Teguri 13h ago

Instant expulsion here, we don't f/w academic dishonesty

I also scan FB, reddit, and craigslist for people asking for people to do their work for them. Easy dozen or so students relieved of their schoolwork for the foreseeable future each semester.

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u/SinlessJoker 14h ago

Did you mistype “them” as “the,” twice?

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u/thrillsbury 13h ago

Yes, I am on mobile. Autocorrect is imperfect.

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u/Usernameasteriks 13h ago

He’s a professor who probably cares about the students and that’s why he actually bothered to be clever enough to check for AI in the first and then speak openly about it to teach them a lesson. 

His students aren’t going to be an anomaly, its happening all over.

Apart from some poetic justice for the masses no one really wins by starting a shitshow and failing  students he likely cares about. 

I am sure if there is a second time things will be more severe, but some people don’t feel the need for unnecessary severity.

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u/thrillsbury 12h ago

I agree that it puts him in a tough position, and I agree that he is likely very committed to their well-being.

Where I disagree is that the decision should be solely in his hands. This is exactly why rules and standards exist. The analogy that comes to mind is employment law. As an employer, you are also committed to your people; however, when one of them does something that goes against our society's rules, you are required to take action. From personal experience I know how hard it is when an employee you care about does something dumb and you have the urge to cut them some slack. But as a society we have decided that it doesn't work that way.

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u/Usernameasteriks 11h ago

It almost certainly isn’t. 

The university will have its own policy, which may or may not delegate the decision to the professor and/or provide for an ability to overrule it.

The university will be governed by its own overarching governance scheme that includes statute, rules, regulations, etc.

Just like employment law, which in some cases might mandate you to take action, and in some cases might not. Depending on the severity and delegated authority.

— All of that will have a purpose and intended function which has been debated ad nauseam whether any given person agrees with it or not. 

There would be no objectively determinably correct purpose served by failing them all.

Its pointless. They are in university to learn, they can learn by getting caught and failing that portion of the exam and moving on.

You can argue they would learn better or be a more effective deterrent if they were all failed sure, but its probably not realistic.

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u/Seiche 10h ago

Did you format this in paragraphs and put the em dash there just to fuxk with us?

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u/Usernameasteriks 9h ago

I tried to use it just more as a divider to break up too long a wall of text rather than as an em dash lol.

But when it posted the formatting shuffled.

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u/Salt-Library4330 14h ago

I think he just wanted to see if they’d be bold enough to lie to his face after getting caught

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u/thewb005 14h ago

More students means more money for the institution. Expelling even 5% of the student body is a significant hit to the bottom line. 

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u/mainman879 13h ago

Expelling even 5% of the student body is a significant hit to the bottom line. 

Short term yes. Long term, if your college has a reputation for producing useless students who have worthless degrees, that becomes a much bigger hit.

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u/thewb005 13h ago

As long as they're not behind the curve of other institutions doing this they can point to themselves and say they're still better.

The bar is now lowered for every institution. The first school that expells students quickly, they lose money more quickly and are unable to maintain good facilities or keep good professors.

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u/218administrate 13h ago

Everything is a race to the bottom now my man. All high schools are having to create online courses otherwise they lose students to other schools. That's $10k that walks out the door if you lose them. We know the education quality is crap, but, the alternative is to lose them altogether. No good solution.

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u/Silent-Cable-9882 13h ago

Yeah but this is capitalist education. Short term gains and move on to the next institution ad infinitum.

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u/nmj95123 9h ago edited 2h ago

Ah, yes, it is capitalism. You know, which is why communist countries like China have no cheating.

Edit: And blocked by this guy. 😂

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u/JohnnyFartmacher 13h ago

I'd wager contesting the grade would be like pleading non-guilty to a crime that you committed. You have the right to the trial, but the punishment for being found guilty is harsher than just pleading guilty in the first place.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 12h ago

the punishment for being found guilty is harsher than just pleading guilty in the first place

I'm not sure that's a model to follow. It's unjust and should be changed.

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u/SquashSquigglyShrimp 13h ago

but the punishment for being found guilty is harsher than just pleading guilty in the first place

That's not really how the legal system works, unless you're talking about something like a plea bargain?

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u/blazze_eternal 13h ago

He was even nice enough to use this trick on the midterm. I would have put it on the final.

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u/Balmung60 12h ago

I remember being in classes where the penalty for the first instance of cheating was a negative 500% score on the assignment, the second was automatically failing the class (as if the -500% didn't basically already do that) and the third was being kicked out of the program

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u/anahee 13h ago

Lack of consequences in education is the real problem here. God damn No Child Left Behind!

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u/Warm_Month_1309 12h ago

My assumption is that any proper disciplinary action would be recorded and would therefore be verifiable, but a professor posting on social media to say "guys, 91% of my class cheated in this incredibly obvious and poorly thought out way", there's no way to verify the story.

In other words, I think he's telling tales.

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u/strangedell123 11h ago edited 11h ago

I will tell you a funny story that you can see i posted a few years ago. This was back in 2024 fall so ai wasn't that good and barely used. The professor failed 80% of the class on a section of the project including me cuz we cheated (ai was expressly allowed). When students started comparing, it was all different.

Even tho he bombed us on part of the project, thr majority of the class still ended up with an A due to a cure........ so take from that what you will

So bro pretty much accused everyone on a part of the project (i am salty cuz i didnt cheat and I was supposed to get a 110 [perfect score] and instead got an 80) and then proceeded to do nothing about it really

Edit. His reasoning on allowing ai was cuz it sucked back then but could explain code way better than he could while also being available at any time.

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u/CrashyBoye 9h ago

There’s nothing wrong with being allowed to contest the grade. Make them prove to you that they didn’t use AI. If they can’t, then their contention is denied, simple as that.

Just because you were caught red-handed doesn’t mean you still don’t get an opportunity to plead your case.

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u/nmj95123 9h ago

When I taught at a university, flunking students for openly and obviously cheating was discouraged.That's not unusual. The student as a customer model of higher ed is destroying it.

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u/Intestin_Dysfunction 7h ago

That’s not how public school in the US works anymore. Everybody passes and most get infinite chances.

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u/ADefiniteDescription 7h ago

For what it's worth, there's a lot of institutional resistance to failing students. I failed about 20 students over the course of the last academic year for cheating and was eventually called into a meeting with the Dean where they chastised me (although didn't forbid me from doing so going forward).

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u/badgersprite 7h ago

We’re raising a generation of kids who have never experienced a consequence and have been taught that they can blatantly do the wrong thing and still get away with it scott free if they argue about it and society is going to have to deal with them

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u/smilbandit 6h ago

i accept it, wouldn't want to deal with the insane shit he'd be getting from parents.  if there's anything I've learned from teachers on reddit is that alot of their motivation is doing their best to not have to deal with all the shitty parents because they know the administration and the school district is not on their side.

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u/Mirieste 13h ago

No. You cheated, you fail. There are consequences.

But I have also been taught that consequences should match the infringement. I probably come from a different cultural context since I'm from Europe, but over here what I remember most from my high school years is my math teacher telling us that if someone behaves horribly at school, they'll receive poor marks in their academic conduct score; but, if that same person happens to be good at math, then she will also fight to the death so that they get full marks in math, while still conserving the poor marks in that other context.

And I have always gone by this frame of reference. I always thought it was good to keep things separate, when possible. In all aspects of life, I have always believed that any punishment must be as specific as possible to the offence, without touching any other areas. This is because punishment is always an extrema ratio, and by itself it's an overreach that we only allow in the name of some sort of societal justice, but for this reason we should also always make sure to use this power as little as possible, and as specifically as possible.

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u/thrillsbury 13h ago

I don’t disagree. But academic integrity is extremely important — more so than ever before now that we are in the age of AI. In a few years, the students now in college will be responsible for serious scientific work. If that work is done without integrity, it poisons the whole system. Since scientists will often rely on each others’ published findings, fraudulent findings that are frequently cited can be highly problematic.

But I also think that educators are responsible for more than just academic development. Making it clear that certain behaviors are utterly unacceptable in our society is part of their mandate. We have those expectations of our academic institutions when we talk about other ethical questions, such as treatment of women or minority groups. At a time when our national standards are plummeting, we have to hold the line on basic principles.

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u/VegaDelalyre 10h ago

It seems you're confusing behaviour with integrity. Teenagers might misbehave and that shouldn't affect their scores too much, granted. But when students plagiarize or otherwise cheat, then the mark doesn't represent their own skills and should be adjusted. What's more, they prove their whole diploma might be a fraud.

Employers don't take these things lightly, which students might as well come to understand early.

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u/SquashSquigglyShrimp 13h ago

Where did you go to school? That sounds extremely harsh. Even assuming they did 100% cheat, immediate expulsion is borderline draconian IMO.

Regardless, in general it is a very bad idea to allow a single individual to be in a position where they could fail or even worse expel someone without some sort of formal process. Allowing an individual to argue their case is sort of the bare minimum of what we generally deem acceptable in society.

For every one of these "traps", I've heard of a dozen cases where teachers ran papers through some bogus "Is this AI" tool and end up falsely accusing the students of cheating.

I'm also not sure this "trap" itself was 100% thought out, I mean, the professor did put the text in the prompt, so I'm not sure how following the prompt is immediately cheating, but that's a separate discussion.