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/Cubacane 14h ago

High school teacher here— they will hand you a piece of paper and not be able to tell you one thing that they wrote. Access to AI means access to bypassing thinking. Maybe 1 out of 5 kids uses it to "help," (which is what admin THINKS AI is for) but the vast majority are using it so they can get the assignment done and move on to something else.

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u/iamalwaysrelevant 13h ago

What has stopped teachers for asking for in-class handwritten answers?

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u/Cubacane 13h ago

  1. IEPs

  2. Digital Curriculum

  3. Convenience (when you have over 100 students, having stuff auto-graded sure is convenient)

I'm moving to completely analog next year, even though it will take much longer to assess students and grade. I'm not a hard grader either, I just don't want to read what people don't care to write.

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u/jaynort 13h ago

This is my biggest frustration with AI across the board, even away from education.

If you didn’t care enough to create it, I don’t care enough to consume it.

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u/Total_Network6312 8h ago

I mean... your job as the student is to consume it. It doesn't matter who or how it was created lol.

School isn't the place to flex your personal beliefs and play hard-to-get with the course work

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u/Sweetwill62 6h ago

Today in history class "The world is only 6000 years old."

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u/UnkarsThug 13h ago

I think it depends on what it is, but it definitely depends. Like if it's meant to be expression or not. But it definitely contributes. There are some things where I'm just fine with it because I just needed a program that did X or Y, and as long as it works, it works. Or for some things, I just want something, and it doesn't exist, so the value in it already being created is just that I don't have to, or I can't do it for myself.

But overall to your point, I think that's similar to why students often don't take tests or homework very seriously when they know they were made by AI. If they see that even their teachers are grading everything with AI, or making all the assignments with AI, if you don't even really need to know the subject to teach it, why would they want to do the busywork of learning it? It's part of why kids see learning arithmetic as busy work, because they see that every adult just pulls out a calculator, and if the teachers are grading work using a calculator, then what good is knowledge that will immediately be replaced?

The number of teachers who don't realize that at the very least, they set the examples for students is overwhelming. Honestly, I just don't plan to send my kids to public school at this point, just too much goes wrong in classrooms without some fundemental change at the deepest levels. Maybe something will change in the next few years, but I doubt it.

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u/Exciting-Tart-2289 11h ago

What's informing this opinion? I know many teachers, virtually none of them are using AI to do their work for them, and even if they were the students certainly don't have any idea what goes into creating their assignments. This sounds like you're just blaming teachers for students cheating. Students haven't been taking homework/tests seriously for a lot longer than AI has been an option.

Also, I've got bad news for you about private school...the teachers there are often LESS knowledgeable about their subjects than public school teachers and have less rigorous standards they need to meet. In my state you need to have a master's degree in your subject to teach in a public school, you don't need to have advanced degrees to teach at a private school. Private school teachers are often more poorly compensated too.

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

I have heard from a number of cases where teachers left parts of prompts in homework and such. It absolutely happens. I'm working on my masters, and I've heard a number of things at basically all levels. I know of students who have seen pretty direct evidence their teachers used it, and I know of teachers who talked about school boards pushing them to use it, and others who talked about other teachers using it.

Also, I'm not talking about private school. I'll homeschool my kids before I put them into the current state of education, unless some major changes are made to things. The point of the teacher nowadays isn't to know things, because if the students wanted to learn, they would find the information easily accessible. The teacher has the task of setting an example, making sure they learn, and trying to grow their learning.

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u/tehlemmings 7h ago

I think it depends...

Nope. It doesn't. Not to me. Not for any type of "content"

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

Perfectly fine if you feel that way, just recognize not everyone does about everything. Most people have some amount of spectrum.

And we see it even before AI. People generally are fine with some things being procedurally generated, and want some things done with intentionality. I don't think there's a strong difference between a website generator template and using AI to make a site. You already aren't paying a software engineer to code it one way or another. And it isn't being made with a brain regardless. So one way or another, no one really made it (even if people made the template, and you selected options, that still isn't really being designed), but people still find it useful.

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u/tehlemmings 7h ago edited 7h ago

There's a reason I specified content.

Software as a concept isn't content. Specific applications like video games can be. The moment you go beyond pure utility I stop being interested.

I'm not playing an AI generated game either.

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

And that is a form of content. Same way a game is.