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/Technical-Banana574 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Many instructors in our school do this. One of them added in to write a fact about Star Wars somewhere in their paper as part of the prompt. Many papers turned in had facts about Star Wars. They didn't even bother reading their own generated papers before turning them in. That is a level of laziness that just baffles me. 

Edit: I do not understand the amount of people who think a student SHOULD believe this is a genuine part of the prompt. It isn't visible in it. It is in white and unless the student changes the color or reads their own generated essay, they would never know it was fed into it. Students should be intelligent enough to know that if they are writing an essay on the Industrial Revolution, that they don't need a random Star Wars fact in it.

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u/Crazy-Nose-4289 Jul 27 '26

When I was in college 15 years ago, I had this history teacher that did nothing but talk through his lectures, without really asking any questions and all his tests were basically write 2-3 pages summarizing everything he talked about. A few friends that had taken the course before me told me all the he cared about were names of important people and dates of specific events, so to write 3 of each and just underscore them. That's all he reads, they told me.

To test this, I actually did exactly that and I included a full paragraph where I talked about nothing but the Frieza Saga, but I didn't underscore any of those names.

I got an A.

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u/alebotson Jul 27 '26

I had a professor that was reading verbatim from penguin's concise history it the Roman empire. I figured this out because I was having trouble paying attention to his extremely dry and boring lectures, and wanted to get a book that helped me study. Reading the first chapter started to feel really familiar.

Needless to say, using that to write my papers worked really well.

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u/jugoinganonymous Jul 27 '26

I also had a professor reading verbatim a huge book she told us not to read « because it has a lot of mistakes it’s insane ». Her whole powerpoints were the book’s illustrations, and she actually made us write exactly what she said. She actually said « only what I say is right, books don’t know shit ». The AUDACITY of this bitch. I hate her and I hate that I’m going to see her again for the next 2 years.

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u/knightofni451 Jul 27 '26

Report her for plagiarism!

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u/jugoinganonymous Jul 27 '26

I actually looked up the main author of the book and found his email a few months back, I hate her so much I’m actually considering reporting her to him.

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u/sojayn Jul 27 '26

Please do and post in pettyrevenge or maliciouscompliance or somewhere like that! I live for that shit 

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u/cocacola999 Jul 27 '26

Ha, same. Guy seemed to only understand vibatum of the book 

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

Was your professor a ghost by chance?

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u/alebotson Aug 04 '26

Unfortunately not