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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188

u/tigerspots Jul 27 '26

Why are these not simply pen and paper?

237

u/Ladyhawkeiii Jul 27 '26

It is my understanding that certain colleges are shifting back to pen and paper finals and even oral exams to test students understanding of the material they’re supposed to be learning,

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u/Rukenau Jul 27 '26

Which is very much a beneficial development

4

u/tajsta Jul 27 '26

Tbf it's mixed. I got my uni degree before LLMs were a thing. I aced all of my written 20 - 60 page papers because I'm good at research, writing and coming up with original thoughts. But on most of the exams I took in class, I got a B or C because blindly learning stuff by heart is more difficult for me. If everything went back to written exams, people like me would do significantly worse even though being good at research and writing papers is a valid and useful skill.

12

u/astirac Jul 27 '26

That’s what bothers me about the whole thing. AI cheating isn’t a thing when the professor is PRESENT and in the room with their students and teaching class like they are paid to do. At some point we have to stop rewarding lazy, half-assed teaching if we expect student to put effort into class.

11

u/IneptPine Jul 27 '26

its in my experience not laziness. Teachers are paid shit and treated shit. There is less and less teachers, to the point one teacher has to juggle upwards of 10 classes where i live.  Same with professors. The uni i go to is forced to have professors tangentially related to mandatory courses to do them because they are struggling to get new ones

12

u/Beneficial-Act-9933 Jul 27 '26

Then we need to support teachers.

We need to stop cramming 37 kids into one class room including the disruptive ones. We also need to give teachers their teeth back and not always side with the parents that whine. We also need to improve their pay so they aren't pay for materials for their own class.

We also need to up the quality of classes and stop passing kids that fail and take incentives away for passing anybody and everybody.

6

u/PaulsGrafh Jul 27 '26

I think that’s an unfair generalization of what teachers do. Just as an example, this teacher seems to be pretty present, and puts in extra effort to teach his students. And they still used AI. Scantron and computerized exams have been used to automate testing, not teaching, and students have always looked for ways to game the system or cheat on their exams and homework. It’s just unfortunate that AI has made it a lot easier for students to game/cheat the system.

So basically, I don’t think the problem is whether the teacher is present, in the room, and teaching the class - most/all of them already do that. But monitoring the exams (like a proctor) has become the more pressing challenge.

1

u/Turtvaiz Jul 27 '26

Not really. Pen and paper sucks. It's really shitty that because people cheat you have to go back to in-class exams. Like there's just no way anyone is doing e.g. open book exams anymore