Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32/35 students cheating with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html

30•leephillips•1h ago

Comments

kylenessen•25m ago

The trap was hidden text instructing the AI to use the word “Madagascar” in a nonsensical way. The assignment was about the Industrial Revolution. “Madagascar wore a toaster to the basketball game” is an example of what a student turned in. The instructor says it was the midterm, but looks like it was more of an online discussion. Anyway, I knew cheating was bad, but this is just flagrant.

vjvjvjvjghv•12m ago

[delayed]

NDlurker•7m ago

I couldn't imagine cheating like that and then not even checking/editing the output.

cmiles8•10m ago

I fear for this generation of folks that are losing the ability to think. They have a very sad existence ahead.

kergonath•6m ago

The ability to think and no attention to detail whatsoever. I mean, proofreading is absolutely necessary, regardless of how the text was written.

rabid_0wl•10m ago

I think there is a vast difference between leveraging a tool and outsourcing your cognitive functions, which is what seemed to happen in this specific case. Are schools failing students? How do you instill a desire to learn? I hope someone smart is trying to solve this because the ramifications on society are bleak. One anecdotal case isn't proof but it follows general trends I've seen across campuses.

api•7m ago

The truth is that most people don’t go to school out of a desire to learn. At least not mostly. They do it out of a desire to earn a living, to be able to get decent jobs.

If getting the degree is just a certificate to allow you to get jobs, that’s all a lot of people will care about.

We need a system of apprenticeship. Some school, yes, but we have over indexed on school and forced it into a role for which it is ill suited.

onion2k•5m ago

The ramifications are bleak if you're destined to become an employee. Students believe that AI can do their work for them, so they shouldn't be surprised if AI gets the job they wanted.

On the other hand, these students are proving that AI is as capable as a student (in their eyes at least) which bodes very well for employers. Limitless numbers of cheap workers.

paxys•5m ago

What are the chances that all those students were diligently doing their assignments themselves before AI? Yes LLMs make cheating more blatant, but if over 90% of students in the class are cheating and the teacher is making TikToks about it, there’s a deeper problem with the institution and system itself that needs to be addressed over just going “LLMs are bad” or “students are lazy”.

acmnrs•5m ago

I wonder if any of the three other students did use AI, but removed the Madagascar signal? So many students not proofreading suggests that they just want to make it look like they did the work but don't care about the grade, which is surprising for a midterm.

It's also a little ironic that he's showing all of this while wearing Ray-Ban Metas.

georgemcbay•4m ago

Ignoring the ethical concerns of cheating, I wish I could be surprised that all of the people who got caught didn't at least put in the minimal effort of proof-reading the AI output before copy & pasting it as their answer.

But at the same time I don't really find it unbelievable as I've seen enough AI usage in the real world where people have similarly attached their name to voluminous slop with obvious problems.

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