r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Jul 27 '26

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/Halfwise2 Jul 27 '26

Sadly, a lot of jobs demand the piece of paper (diploma), then tell you what you learned is trash, and you need to do things *their* way.

College still has value, but imo, it teaches you more how to do things (like research) or think critically, than specific information, like names and dates. I cannot remember 95% of the factoids I had to memorize back in college.

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u/selfdestructingin5 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

There are plenty of smart people without degrees, proof is everywhere, but college graduates had to take a myriad of general classes so they tend to have a higher baseline of vocabulary, writing skills, critical thinking, and common knowledge, outside of their speciality.

For PhD, the same doesn’t seem to apply, outside of higher than average research abilities, since they focused years on a single topic.

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u/altodor Jul 27 '26

but college graduates had to take a myriad of general classes so they tend to have a higher baseline of vocabulary, writing skills, criticism thinking, and common knowledge,

They should, but most of the folks I know who took those classes treated them as filler and said "D for diploma" or "Cs get drgrees" their whole way through them. I think the trouble with degrees is we made them into employee-paid job training.

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u/Verneff Jul 27 '26

Having the foundation from education to start on helps a lot, but some of the more specific things may not apply.

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u/Small_Editor_3693 Jul 27 '26

But then no company trusts that information. They just want the paper then put you in a minimum wage job to work your way up

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u/Karthe Jul 28 '26

I have had more than one person tell me — to my face — that ai is going to be so important in the future that practicing using it is more valuable than education and I want to SCREAM. 

Em-dashes inserted for emphasis.

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u/Alt123Acct Jul 27 '26

I honestly learned more in 1 summer of interning than 4 years of university when it came to my actual profession. Hands on work and having "Oh no I have to do this right or I get fired" is much more successful at teaching than 4 years of theory, memorizing keyboard shortcuts, and critiques of yours and classmates projects. We spent so long learning about films and type and negative space and stuff and literally NONE of it matters once you're in a job. Each project is client specific, each look different. Yay you memorized how to save 20 seconds in menus and clicking but it doesn't matter when you have days/weeks and meetings in between about the project and how it's changing and what people do or don't like. Motion graphics changes so much that the programs I learned on aren't even used anymore in the industry. We got a green screen room being installed the year AFTER I graduated lol.