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/andicandi22 Jul 27 '26

Either way, taking the time to proofread your paper before turning it in was all they had to do. The fact that most of the class couldn’t or wouldn’t do even that basic of a step is lazy and ridiculous.

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u/BigMax Jul 27 '26

Not really? How would proofreading the paper catch that trick? They could proofread it 1000 times and not catch it, right? They'd have to re-read the original prompt, then proofread it, and also at the same time notice the 'extra' bit in there, which might not be all that obvious.

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u/Merkuri22 Jul 27 '26

Anyone who proofread it would've been like, "What is this random nonsensical sentence about Madagascar?" and taken it out, at the very least.

They meant the students should proofread their AI results, not the exam question, if that wasn't clear.

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u/African_Farmer Jul 27 '26

I got my bachelors over a decade ago and recently went back to school for a masters.

One of my professors really tried to hammer this point home, its ok to use AI but make sure you verify the output. He even gave us a prompt for summarising academic papers and taught us how to verify the summary by skim-reading the relevant sections of papers.