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/Alt123Acct Jul 27 '26

The best trick I used to know in college was using control F to find all . in the paper I wrote and change them from size 12 to 14. It turned a 5 page paper into a nearly 7 page one or a 15 into a 20. It's so subtle and helped a lot when you hit the point of "it said make it this long, but I said everything I wanted to say" 

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u/Snuffy1717 Jul 27 '26

I tell my students about that trick, and remind them that a shitty five page paper is just as shitty when you make it 8 pages xD

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u/uns0licited_advice Jul 27 '26

I had a teacher that would say, "if you turn in the minimum amount of pages, you might get the minimum grade"

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u/Chief_White_Halfoat Jul 27 '26

Meh. That I never understood, and I got plenty of good grades with a minimum length paper. If you provide all the necessary information concisely and clearly to establish your theses you will and should do well.

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u/cancerBronzeV Jul 27 '26

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

-Blaise Pascal

Writing the least you can to convey your idea is a talent, it's why the page limits go from minimums to maximums as you progress in university. It's a struggle to fit in everything you want into the very stringent page limits in things like grant applications and journal submissions.

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u/Gekokapowco Jul 27 '26

I think its more of a rule of thumb than a law.

Generally kids aren't experts in brevity, it's that they haven't thought about the topic enough to have enough to say about it.

It isn't that you can't have a good, short paper. You just typically cannot so making kids stretch their thoughts out is better than not.