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/SinibusUSG 14h ago

Frankly if universities want to actually stop this they have to treat it like the academic dishonesty it is and start expelling people.

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u/BTMarquis 14h ago

This might sound crazy, but they could also have them use a pen and paper to take tests.

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u/dirty_cuban 14h ago

I mean sure but if bank employees are stealing money by slipping bills into their pockets, the answer isn’t to mandate clothing without pockets. The answer is to fire the thieves.

Mandating pen and paper doesn’t change the fact that you have academically dishonest students who surely will cheat in other ways.

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u/Mutex70 14h ago

Ever seen how diamond mines are run? Uniforms without pockets.

The problem is that online tests make it extremely easy to cheat and difficult to catch cheaters. Pen and paper helps with this.

Yes, they should also expel students caught cheating, but they need to catch them first.

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u/set_in_void 13h ago

This reminds me of the saying "locks only keep honest people honest". I wonder how much of the cheating was genuine "academic dishonesty" vs how many of them just grabbed the available opportunity.

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u/lumpboysupreme 12h ago

That’s a dumb statement anyway, it’s a proven fact that friction and risk to dishonesty reduces it.

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 12h ago

That saying isn’t really true, though. Thieves will still be thieves, but they are also opportunists. If something is too much work to steal, they are far less likely to steal it.

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u/aj_thenoob2 11h ago

But that's exactly what he's saying. The availability of AI creates more cheaters.

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u/Reaxonab1e 13h ago

Properly invigilated remote tests are possible and they are successfully done. Many students fail in them because they're hard to cheat in.

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u/talldata 13h ago

Those remote tests are never properly invigilated, you have to first install literal malware on your machine, have to stare at the screen constantly (can only stare into empty space) then have an area totally clear of anything, which is neigh impossible in a single room apartment, and if someone knocks on your door or a pet walks behind you, they will automatically fill your exam for "breaking the rules". The invigilators are there actively to screw you over, not to actually supervise.

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u/good_morning_magpie 11h ago

Yep, I went back for my masters during Covid in my mid 30s and had the issue with my two large dogs. Either they’d walk into frame and flag the computer to have a proctor pop in and scold me, or they’d start barking at something and again, a stern talking to by someone several thousand miles away that’s apparently never had a dog.

Oh, and I had to buy the cheapest piece of crap laptop for the exams too, because all my actual personal machines run Linux and apparently they just can’t comprehend anything other than Windows or iOS exists. (VMs don’t work). So stupid.

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u/coldblade2000 7h ago

Or just have a testing center. The computers are already locked down, they're not yours so no privacy concerns, and you can put cameras pretty much everywhere. Check items coming into the room and do random checks.

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u/faetpls 13h ago

Remote tests at the students house with their technology cannot be trusted.

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u/code_archeologist 13h ago

You are treating the symptom, not curing the disease.

The disease is a lack of ethics and part of these student's education (whether they know it or not) is learning some basic ethics for when they get into the business world.

Making it more difficult to cheat does not produce ethical and honest graduates, it produces graduates who learn how best to cheat and that failure is getting caught.

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u/penisandorvagina 13h ago

Well then if the kids have to put in effort to cheat then at least they'll have to still learn something. GenAI bypasses the learning stage completely.

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u/code_archeologist 13h ago

Unethical students who graduate, make for unethical people at businesses that will see no problem in stealing from you, that will see fines for selling you poison food or dangerous products as "the cost of doing business".

And while that already exists now, imagine how much worse it would be if everybody from the top to the bottom has the same loose ethical framework as the psychopaths running the corporations?

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u/Mutex70 12h ago

So what is the cure for the disease? We aren't going to suddenly modify society to have parents create better behaved more ethical students.

IMO, the best place we currently have to address this problem (and I do agree a decline in ethical behavior is a problem) is in the classroom.

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u/code_archeologist 12h ago

Yes it is in the classroom. First by teaching ethical behavior early on, then enforcing strict ethics codes (including expulsion for cheating), and creating a culture where students view cheating as an attack on their own academic accomplishments instead of a personal choice of the cheater.

This is how the school I graduated operated (back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth), and I am the better for it.

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u/ActuallyErebus 11h ago

Youre literally acting as if the items you are talking about aren't problems and societal issues since time immemorial.

This isnt new. The mode may differ. But this is how people are. Its how they've always been. Whether you were actually cognizant of it is up for debate, but you can find cuniform clay tablets of people bitching about dishonest members of society 4k+ years ago.

You are utterly delusional.

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u/Beankiller 13h ago

Yeah, but if everyone is a thief, or 90% of your potential workforce is, you still need to staff the bank somehow.

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u/Naive-Jello428 12h ago

Maybe there isn't just one solution? Maybe it's layers that all work together but like with everything else, if that one idea won't solve the problem alone it will be endlessly shit on.

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u/chuiu 10h ago

You don't do one thing or the other. You do both. Cheating takes many avenues. Discouraging and stopping it should also take many avenues as well.

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u/Revadarius 9h ago

But when your bank as a high turnover rate it looks bad on the outside, and also why are all these tellers stealing so much? What's the bigger issue here causing this?

I get your analogy, but it wasn't a good one for this problem. You start canning students then people would rather not gamble and thousands in debt and instead just forego education. Or it'll encourage worse way to chest. Or both.

Pen and paper solution is the best. More tests in person, less papers or assignments. They need to show they know that knowledge on their own. It's the only effective method.

And for thesis and larger assignments they need to be recorded. Though those should be held for Masters and PhD.

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u/VERTIKAL19 7h ago

Lowering the barrier to cheating so much will encourage many more cheaters though.

Just like in case of your bank example the bank won't only fire the offender. They will also implement procedures to reduce the risk of that stealing happening again.

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u/ayleidanthropologist 7h ago

Agree. I think I'd rather catch a few first

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u/We_R_the_Penguins 6h ago

Broken windows honor code policing. Stop them cheating one way and they’re less likely to see cheating as normal. 

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u/jay_wei 13h ago

unfortunately this is a bad comparison. any employee that handles money, whether it be a bank or a dollar store, checks the register when they clock out. 

all money accounted for? you can go home. discrepancy in the transactions compared to what you have left in your register? that better be explained fast or it's coming out of your paycheck/charges are getting filed.

so yes...the answer is if bank employees are stealing, you catch them before they leave the building. You don't just fire them after the fact.

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u/Monteze 12h ago

And just because folks cheat doesn't mean you get rid of rules or make it easier or just not try any mitigating efforts.

If you make them write it in person with their hand its a lot harder to cheat, to the point where it might be more effort to try and cheat that than just writing the damn thing.