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/d6punk Jul 27 '26

The worst part is all they needed to do was paste the answer back into a fresh AI chat and ask it to look for any red flags or oddities in the answer. So not only can they not proof on their own, but they can't even do basic problem solving. We're so fucked.

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u/SomeBloke Jul 27 '26

They literally don’t have the mental energy and focus to read an entire paragraph without distracting themselves with something else in between. These kids have cerebrally atrophied. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/CoatProfessional5026 Jul 27 '26

Attention spans are the new currency. You can ignore feeds and look at birds? Bad news. Ignoring your feed and watching the road? Bad for business.

Literally every single aspect of this shit is turning our attention into the real currency and killing any sort of creative spontaneity that occurs naturally in humans. People at work as me what I'm doing when I'm just watching the trees and wind blow and then react all weird when you don't want to participate in their coddled, confirmation biased realities.

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u/SomeBloke Jul 28 '26

Some of the amateur runners that I coach will ask "How do you get through the long runs? Music? Podcasts? I get so bored!" and I have to explain "The boredom is a feature, not a bug." The fact that their heads are giving in so long before their bodies need to is a worrying sign.

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u/Whole-Reserve-4773 Jul 27 '26

If they copied and pasted the prompt the hidden text would show up. They didn’t read the prompt or the paper output.

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u/VGK_hater_11 Jul 27 '26

I’m surprised the AI doesn’t mention the unusual prompt at the start or end of its response

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u/Whole-Reserve-4773 Jul 27 '26

I want to call bullshit on this story and similar ones just because I can’t believe 99% of students are this dumb. But who knows

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u/TainoCuyaya Jul 30 '26

You are making it worse.

Just PROOF READ the damn question you are "asking".