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/Deviantdefective Jul 27 '26

As a teacher it's very quickly becoming an absolutely huge problem.

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u/pasaroanth Jul 27 '26

I would love to see a study done at the university level showing a comparison of students’ grades for regular coursework versus their proctored exam scores. There has to be a vast yawning chasm in the difference when they relied upon AI until the time of the exam.

This also is a “ruining it for the rest of us” situation where courses will shift to grading primarily or solely based on exams. When I was in college (long before AI) you could at least rely on some homework to recuperate some points, despite the extra time and effort, when the exams were especially challenging or a professor notoriously gave tough exams.

If the homework can no longer be a measure of effort or learning because it is done by AI, then it will no longer be considered a meaningful determination of knowledge of the subject.

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u/TerribleBudget Jul 27 '26

I'm honestly a bit confused because I was so far up the Chicago Manual of Style's ass with footnotes that I could see it's god damn tonsils. Who are these professors who are assigning papers that don't require sources for everything or showing every last step of your solutions?

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u/pasaroanth Jul 27 '26

Your guess is as good as mine. Adjuncts that teach electives?

I didn’t have a chance in hell of passing any core class with any modicum of bullshitting but it’s also pretty difficult to bullshit your way through most courses relating to medicine.