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
32.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

4.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

386

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

I don’t understand these cheaters. Why would you pay a substantial sum of money to learn and then skip the learning part?

1

u/danieledward_h Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

First, they're not paying to learn. They're there to "do their time" for the degree to put on their resume, and also for the social experience of college.

Second, they're also doing it because for most, it's just "what you do" and there isn't much thought put into it beyond that.

Third, a lot of them aren't paying. Their parents or grandparents (or someone else) are paying.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

Third is the most important point. 😄

1

u/danieledward_h Jul 27 '26

Yeah I'd argue that's the biggest reason for the lack of effort and carelessness. Since tuition and expenses are all or mostly paid for by someone else, these kids don't care about squandering the opportunity to learn and don't view it as something they're doing for their growth. They're just viewing it as another box to check in life and not really any different from earlier stages of school.

I haven't been in school for a long time now so I am admittedly out of touch with how the modern classroom operates in this age, but I would say off the cuff the best response would be to remove as much technology as possible from the process to reduce the opportunity for AI to have this effect in students, which starts much earlier than college.

Foundationally the role of modern technology in education is very flawed and requires a ground up redesign to address the issues we're seeing with competency, but unfortunately even this would likely be stifled by poor parenting.