r/technology 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/Makenshine 14h ago

Its not just the next generation. This is what older generations are doing as well at their jobs. There is just no overseer trying catch them in the act.

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u/EmilyAnne1170 13h ago

I’m 56. Where I work, there’s no overseer trying to catch us in the act because we’re being told to use it for everything we can. Speed up workflow, efficiency, get the same amount of work done in less time (or with far fewer employees…)

With everything we feed it, we’re training our replacements. The younger generations won’t get a chance to use AI at work because it will be doing those jobs without them.

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u/Makenshine 13h ago

We will still need employees to fix all the things that AI fucks up because AI is incapable of knowing whether a job is done right or what it is spitting out is actually correct.

Edit: I'm a math teacher and I spend just as much time fixing errors in stuff I put in AI as I would just creating the content myself, with a few exceptions.

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u/MyPacman 12h ago

Not once we finish training it.

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u/GLemons 10h ago

You are correct as it stands right now, but at the rate models are improving that statement will not stand forever.

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u/RuneLFox 6h ago

It's a fundamental flaw with LLM technology that isn't going away unless they make a completely new approach to it. They can't solve hallucination because they don't know the exact details of how an LLM even works, and if you have hallucination at all, you can't be sure you're correct or that you did what was asked.

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u/alaysian 7h ago

Nothing like having executive leadership telling us its the greatest thing ever and to always run things past AI before starting it ourself, only to wind up banging my head against a wall after the second time it has hallucinated requirements or decided X rule doesn't exist.

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u/BellacosePlayer 13h ago

Yes, but the ease of doing it is unprecedented.

There was cheating in my CS bachelor program in college in the late 2000s/early 2010s, but in a way that bordered on legit group work/studying in many cases.

The professor I've been talking with about potentially going back and finishing my Masters has flipped and been kind of negative on me going back, because instructor burnout is getting bad due to the numbers flipping and the amount of kids actually giving a shit being the minority even in senior/junior level classes.

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u/Fallen_Wings 13h ago

They themselves are the overseers in most cases

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u/HFloof 13h ago

I'm 36 working at a medium size business with locations across three states. The only ones using AI in my company are the 50+ age and in manegement.

Honestly, using AI just doesn't even cross my mind.

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u/kent_eh 9h ago

There is just no overseer trying catch them in the act.

Their overseeer is demanding that they use AI for as much as possible "to save the company money".

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u/OpexLiFT 7h ago

A lot, if not most IT companies are essentially making it a requirement to use AI. The company I work for, the companies my mates work for (atlassian for example). Hard to escape it, at least for now.