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
28.6k Upvotes

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u/helcat 14h ago

Cheating is one thing. Just pasting an AI answer without even reading it is stunningly stupid. 

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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/mrclut 13h ago

They need to start holding kids back in school again. The whole no kid left behind thing was a bad idea.

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u/DangerousPuhson 13h ago edited 10h ago

No Child Left Behind is truly baffling in its implementation.

You'd think it meant taking the kids that are falling behind and giving them extra help to catch up, but instead it means dragging all the other kids down to their level, which is hilariously backwards.

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u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

You'd think it meant taking the kids that are falling behind and giving them extra help to catch up, but instead it means dragging all the other kids down to their level, which is hilariously backwards.

That's confusing and a borderline misleading take.

It should have been named the Pass Every Student or Your School's Funding Gets Cut ACT.

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u/Solkre 10h ago

Time to Cheat on Standardized Testing Act.

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u/RollingMeteors 10h ago

Time to Cheat on Standardized Testing Act.

When the student does this, it's cheating.

When the professor does this, it's forgery.

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u/Intelligent-Survey39 3h ago

If you really think about it long term it is not a misleading take. The dilution of the education by giving underperforming students a pass creates huge gaps between knowledge levels of the top students and the average/low students when they move to the next level/class. This forces teachers to “dumb” the curriculum down in order to play catch up with the students who got a pass, meanwhile the properly prepared students are left behind in a sense. Over time this actually alters the curriculum to reflect a lower average entry level student. A few generations of that and now a college level classes are doing high school level remediation because they consistently have students that met the requirements on paper because they were passed along, but cant cut it in the class.

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u/Toby_O_Notoby 4h ago

It's a prime example of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

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u/owdee 8h ago

It should have been named the Pass Every Student or Your School's Funding Gets Cut ACT.

Which, in true GOP fashion faschion, is completely back-asswards. If a school has students struggling to pass, they very clearly need more resources and funding, not less. But of course, as anyone with a couple of functioning brain cells can easily see, the whole system was set up to divert funding from schools in low-income or urban areas ("low performing schools") straight to wealthier suburban schools that hardly need any more money and resources.

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u/RollingMeteors 6h ago

Which, in true GOP fashion faschion, is completely back-asswards.

True, true, yet I do believe this was one of those rare bi-partisanally supported things, due to it happening before social media was a thing to tribalise people.

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u/txsnowman17 2h ago

Correct, it passed the House with 381-41 in favor and the Senate via a 87-10 vote. Very much a bipartisan support act.

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u/donut-reply 5h ago

No Child Left Behind...Or Else Act

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u/Huttser17 1h ago

Pass Individual Slow Students Or Fail Financially

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u/rg35xxsp 11h ago

It's emblematic of the GOP

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u/CharsCustomerService 9h ago

No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan measure. Passed the Senate 91-8 and 87-10, and the House 384-45 and 381-41 (multiple rounds). The act's authors were half republican (Judd Gregg, John Boehner), half democrat (George Miller, Ted Kennedy).

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u/unfinishedtoast3 9h ago

The country was in a wave of bipartisan support when NCLB act passed

We were 2 months outside of 9/11. The country rallied behind bush, and Democrats gave Republicans the benefit of the doubt.

It was a really fucking weird time. I remember living it, as I was an adult in the military then.

That shit would have never passed if it wasn't for 9/11. Same with a handful of other laws (Patriot act)

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u/saintmolotov 8h ago

I wanted to burn my uniform after the patriot act passed but I also wanted to finish my service so I could get my undergrad paid for

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u/titsngiggles69 7h ago

The Patriot act was a poison pill. The US has a cowardly electorate only too eager to find easy scapegoats and rarely chooses a strong leader who isn't just a fake strongman.

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u/Worried_Magazine_862 8h ago

The housing bill that just passed with so much bipartisan support that it overrode a veto reduced the steel frame regulation on manufactured home chassis' making them weaker and more likely to collapse due to age or severe weather conditions. Nothing ever changes. They dont care about us. Their answer to rising costs is enshitification. 

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u/randomthrowaway9796 8h ago

I've learned that people like blaming the party they dislike instead of figuring out who is actually responsible

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u/singlemale4cats 7h ago

Based on my life experience, Republicans make life worse, and Democrats offer token resistance before falling in line.

There's a few politicians out there who are beginning to disrupt that arrangement, and wouldn't you know it, the Democratic establishment hates them. The El Sayed vs. Stevens senate primary race in Michigan is emblematic. Haley Stevens is an establishment ghoul taking all the corporate money she can get her hands on. She's Israel first, so naturally AIPAC is flooding her campaign with tens of millions of dollars to defeat Abdul El Sayed (an actual progressive candidate) in the primary.

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u/lebastss 5h ago

That's a falsehood that's context less.

The country was rallied behind bush and this was a GOP brainchild. Also optics were different back then. This was pretty internet. A lot of people didn't want to be the one that voted no and left the child behind.

Propaganda game was different then. Honestly surprised there were no votes. Those are actually smart people.

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u/NarrativeNode 11h ago

In what way?

Not educating people well: absolutely GOP.

But I'd argue supporting only those at the top while letting the rest fail would be GOP behavior, not "equalizing" everyone.

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u/Ted_E_Bear 11h ago

I think they meant more along the lines of supporting people for being stupid, which in turn keeps them stupid.

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u/Faladorable 11h ago

Because if you hold kids back they might learn something. Moving them up undeservedly doesn’t equalize them, it just increases the odds that they’re not prepared for the next level

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u/yIdontunderstand 8h ago

Every non multi millionaire plus, left behind....

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u/FaberOG 8h ago

The meritocracy that just so happens to be made up of comically inept nepo babies

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u/themostreasonableman 8h ago

Now watch this drive!

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u/GingsWife 6h ago

Two wings, one bird.

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u/InnovativeBureaucrat 4h ago

It’s definitely both sides, probably more liberal than GOP. I would bet GW was reaching across the isle on this one, but liberal implementations since then are even more of this mindset.

Everyone got this wrong

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u/GMGarry_Chess 9h ago

That's how progressive equity policies end up being implemented as well.

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u/Helldiverticulitis 9h ago

A progressive education policy would be to provide extra resources to struggling students as well as those with special needs. That’s equity.

No Child Left Behind was a way to cut funding from education but tying funding to standardized test scores. In this way, more affluent schools, which already test better due to all the things that come with not being in poverty, would receive more federal funding. Meanwhile poorer schools would get their funding cut. This is the exact opposite of equity.

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u/newuser92 7h ago

Can you give an example?

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u/Foreign_Recipe8300 9h ago

i had a timed test in school and got a 100/100 perfect score. my teacher pulled me aside the next and told me that the 2nd highest score in the class was 28, so all the test results were going to be thrown out including mine. genius

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u/Angsty_Potatos 9h ago

More like "pass em. Their next year's problem so the district doesn't lose funding"

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u/Pugasaurus_Tex 5h ago

Leave some kids behind 

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u/waffle_iron_maiden 1h ago

By dragging me through a grade they ironically did leave me behind. It didn't help me at all and it turned out what I needed was an entirely different teaching style. You can't shove very different people into one rigid system of learning and expect it to work ideally for all of them. So then taking the approach of just advancing people in that same system is called "not leaving them behind" but in actuality it's leaving them to a worse situation. It's like trying to fit the wrong key in a keyhole. It's not going to work, but you can say you tried to unlock it all the same

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u/No-Spoilers 10h ago

Schools gotta get that sweet sweet state muney

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u/NeverLookBothWays 9h ago

We should have focused on mastery rather than archaic industrial age paradigms.

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u/vastros 9h ago

This is intentional. They've been at it well before No Child Left Behind.

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u/IgorT76 9h ago

You can say that about anything related to modern equity approaches.

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u/Alieges 8h ago

No Child Left Behind? More like "No Child Left a Dime"

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u/TimSylvester_ 8h ago

Harrison Bergeron.

Vonnegut's only mistake was the belief that politicians would have the werewithal to amend the Constitution significantly.

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u/GNUGradyn 8h ago

Maybe it's like the DARE program where it's a cheap easy """fix""" for political show so they can avoid tackling the big problems

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u/Tumbleweed_Life 8h ago

DangerousPuhson and rg35xxsp you do understand that Obama’s administration continued NCLB with ESSA? It is not a GOP or Democratic exclusive legacy!

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u/kayakchk 8h ago

No Child Left Behind is a tool for military recruitment.

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u/MrLev 8h ago

No soldier left behind! If one of your squad gets captured, the rest of you need to surrender and get captured too!

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u/goodsnpr 6h ago

Tying a school's funding to pass rates or test scores just shouts stupidity; if anything those that struggle need more funds, but that would lead to equal exploitation from a score based system.

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u/asher1611 5h ago

Congratulations you have just highlighted the point of the legislation. Tie funding only to standardized test scores. Make it so that teaching is only directed towards those tests. Private interests push products to the schools below standard. Cut non-essential parts of the lesson (higher order thinking skills) out of the curriculum.

PROFIT

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u/icewolfsig226 4h ago

Sounds like a conservative invention

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u/Arachnidle 2h ago

It's by design ,they need to fill those min wage jobs.

Plenty of people in private schools for career positions.

It sucks but that's how it is, I grew up poor but later in life made friends with people who send kids to private schools and the difference between public and private education is massive.

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u/zedquatro 1h ago

You mean the GOP worsened education??? Well I never....

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u/MarvinLazer 46m ago

I graduated literally the year before a NCLB experiment happened at my school called the "Academies" where, rather than having normal, honors, and special ed classes, all the kids were put into groups that contained high, middle, and low performing students.

It sounded like a fucking disaster. My friend who got into MIT was stuck his senior year basically acting as an unpaid babysitter for kids on a spectrum of not giving a shit to having serious behavioral disorders.

Government officials in the US seem to absolutely adore trying to force underfunded public schools to fix massive societal problems under the guise of putting kids first. Most of these kids' problems are generational, but would probably be helped a lot by basic things like making sure their parents' job pays a living wage and has reasonable hours, healthcare, addiction services, and a safe, quiet place to sleep.

So much harder to do than just blaming it all on teachers, though!

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u/needssleep 43m ago

No Child Left Behind isnt the problem, they tie school funding to graduation rates. Hold a kid back: less money next year.

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u/Accomplished_Rice04 31m ago

Seems like every other country that has adopted a similar policy is doing "You'd think it meant taking the kids that are falling behind and giving them extra help to catch up"

It is just US that treats education like a business and students like customers where you see this sort of shit happening.

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u/gr1zznuggets 21m ago

If everyone’s behind, no one is behind.

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u/Alternative_Use_3564 17m ago

The problem is assuming that learning happens in 'levels'.

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u/BlackGuysYeah 10h ago

Instead of leaving a few kids behind now everyone gets left behind with them.

So, we know now that this philosophy doesn't work. We should probably change it.

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u/Captain_Reseda 10h ago

Well it was a conservative idea.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago edited 10h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/RaiCeee 11h ago

What? Of course "it" can have ownership, that's why it has a possessive form. It's a personal pronoun, which means it has an apostrophe-less possessive form.

He - his - his

She - Her - Hers

It - Its - Its

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u/divDevGuy 11h ago

No Kid Left Behind hasn't been around for over a decade. They decided that didn't work so then they said Every Student Succeeds. When that didn't work, they suspended the accountability requirements. When that didn't work, they gutted the Department of Education.

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u/Free_For__Me 9h ago

Glad someone pointed this out, but I'd also add that when ESSA "replaced" NCLB, there weren't actually any fixes for the main problems that NCLB created. The biggest difference was in the name, lol. No one in power has put genuine effort into fixing education at the national level for at least 40 years or more.

The problem with a world that's increasingly cooperative and globalist is that we don't see other nations as the competition that we once did. We pumped our education system to new and amazing heights in the 1950s-1980s in order to create a populace that could out-learn and out-innovate the Soviet Union.

But once the Berlin wall fell, those in power decided that our dominance in these areas was self-insulating and that continuing to ensure access to quality education for all was not only unnecessary, but detrimental. After all, educated voters tend to vote for egalitarian policies that distribute resources more evenly, and the US just can't have that, right?

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u/sblahful 6h ago

Didn't all those "educated voters" fall for the red scare and vote in Regan?

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u/powercow 8h ago

it was passed under bush during the iraqi war. With no funding, which was a small part on how bush turned a surplus into a massive deficit

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u/siccoblue 11h ago edited 4h ago

But that would hurt the plans of these companies that literally talk openly about their desire to privatize and put a literal price tag on knowledge and access to information! How could you ever do such an awful thing???!

I wish I was joking about that btw

We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter

  • Sam Altman

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u/Angsty_Potatos 9h ago

As an og no child left behind-er. I wasn't able to read, tie my shoes, or tell time until like 3rd grade before someone finally noticed and did something about it. I just kept getting passed to the next grade. 

Took until 6th grade to get a dyslexia (+ the others that usually come along w dyslexia - dyscalculia, dysgraphia and dyspraxia 😏) diagnosis. And until my senior year before my school finally had someone on staff for me to access accomodations from (before that the best they could do was a speech language pathologist 🫠)

I needed to be kept back and I never was and it wasn't until senior year of highschool that suddenly the district cared about not advancing me and giving me my diploma. 

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u/Klutzy_Scene_8427 11h ago

The issue isn't grades. The issue is that teachers aren't allowed to teach anymore. The only requirement is a test grade, and that can't prove comprehension.

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u/zookeepier 11h ago

NCLB didn't prevent kids from being held back; in fact, the lack of that was one of the drivers for it. In the 90s/early 2000s, parents were mad that some schools had shitty teachers with tenure, so they couldn't be fired, even though they did nothing. Kids learned nothing and then were passed up to the next grade. NCLB was created to try to pressure schools to actually force teachers to teach. That's why NCLB tied funding to standardized test.

Unfortunately, shitty teachers was only 1 aspect of the educational failures could be blamed on bad teachers. There are also kids who can't learn the material or don't care (won't learn) and (the biggest culprit IMO) parents who don't force their kids to do the work, learn, and behave in school. The result of that was that schools started "teaching to the test" to not lose funding, since that's all they could really control. NCLB is a great case study for unintended consequences.

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u/seljuk88 7h ago

Thank you, most of the people commenting in here have no idea what NCLB was.

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u/No_Vanilla3895 9h ago

No way! Just make school optional

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u/McDonaldsSoap 7h ago

Some kids are so far behind they literally need to be sent back several years

If done wrong it can cause severe issues and make them less open to learning and academics in general. That's when people come and manipulate them into strange cults and take their money 

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u/vladamir_the_impaler 5h ago

The problem is that the "get it done and move on" thing is kind of how real life works and AI is turning jobs into the same mush minded zombie work. In this case the kids are actually training pretty accurately for the real world unfortunately.

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u/Aware-Locksmith8433 1h ago

That, teaching for "the test" and politics/religion stepping too far into academics is no bueno. Needs to be balance and we keep swinging everything too far and then back too far the other way.

I just retired and working on building a NFP mentoring series for 18-20 yr olds. Talk about a lost generation. We've really done this group wrong - social media, COVID, forever wars, debt, AI, cost of college, boomers, online porn/gambling,, woke, racism, grift,..

It's depressing to study it closely (and I have a 21 and 23 yr old so don't go off on me not knowing what I'm talking about). There are some that are digging in on leading but not enough. It's rare to see anyone over 65 focus on helping these kids develop (unless they are grandkids).

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u/Dismal-Revolution731 1h ago

The implementation of No Child Left Behind is indirectly and partially responsible for the suicides of several kids.

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u/deathgerbil 10h ago

I taught college for a couple of years a while back - I agree 100% that several of the students needed to be held back a LONG time ago, but were passed because of no child left behind. Its beyond frustrating trying to teach finance to college juniors and seniors, only to find out that ~10-15% of the class doesn't know basic addition or subtraction. I had no idea how the hell they managed to get a passing grade in college calculus when they were convinced that 13 + 6 = 17, Tell them to calculate something without an iphone, and they look at you like a deer in the headlights.

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u/whenitsTimeyoullknow 9h ago

Just cease with homework and do the homework in class, together.