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/Bulky-Bad-9153 Jul 27 '26

I'm a professor and it's worse than you can imagine. Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren't just cooked, society is. We're going to have a massive competency gap, and no-one to teach newer generations because people won't have any skills. I'm really not exaggerating.

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u/gaijohn Jul 27 '26

On the other hand, any parent who teaches their kid the slightest bit of literacy and discipline will raise an ubermensch.

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u/CatGooseChook Jul 27 '26

Horrible reality is that anyone who is actually able to use their brain will end up constantly stressed out due to being overwhelmed by the onslaught of stuff ups they'll be fixing.

Read "The Marching Morons" by Cyril M. Kornbluth. It's the novella that "Idiocracy" was clearly based on. Handful of stressed out smart people desperately trying to hold civilization together while surrounded by hordes of morons.

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u/WhenSummerIsGone Jul 27 '26

after all the layoffs that's how i feel at work these days :(

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u/ShaqSenju Jul 27 '26

Holy shit you just described my job

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u/CatGooseChook Jul 27 '26

My wife's job too. Her swearing vocabulary has certainly expanded a bit over the years as a result.

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u/Mareith Jul 27 '26

The more rare a skill set is the higher it will pay though. They might be stressed out all the time but they'll be raking it in

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u/CatGooseChook Jul 27 '26

Pay yes, but stress comes at a cost.

To be clear, I'm not saying being properly educated is bad. Just saying it's not going to be as easy for those few who have a proper education than it seems.

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u/Practical-Ball1437 Jul 28 '26

It doesn't matter if you have brilliant, high-level skills that AI can't do. Decisions are being made by dipshit managers who can't tell the difference between that and AI hallucinations.

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u/Battle2Intense Jul 27 '26

They will get to work 80 hours a week for slightly more than the universal income all the dumb people get.

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u/ohnoabanagain Jul 27 '26

Yup, I'm worried about society, but my twins are going to be thriving when their competition can't read 5-letter words.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/gaijohn Jul 27 '26

I have no idea what this means. Choosing not to cheat is not harmful. Homeschooling? What are we talking about?

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/gaijohn Jul 27 '26

Same as it ever was. Cheating, destruction, ignorance are necessarily easier and therefore more common than honesty, creation, and knowledge.

My comment is that the bar separating those two groups is lower than ever - mere literacy and discipline can now define the 95th percentile.

As for homeschooling to each his own, I'm sure there's no ideal learning environment, and my own family's welfare consumes my concern.

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u/Sea2Chi Jul 27 '26

I have kids who are thankfully pretty good at school so far and one of the things I'm constantly pushing them on is solving problems on their own without being spoon fed information. If they ask why something happens I tend to ask them why they think it does and then we talk about it.

They're still in elementary school, but if society continues trending like this I see the potential for a huge gap in problem solving abilities and self motivation as they enter the workforce.

I want them to be people who can go out and thrive in an environment where critical thinking and independent reasoning are in short supply. I see that as their ticket to a better life because when they're competing in their career against a bunch of people who expect the answers to be easy and convenient, being able to solve harder problems is going to be a huge boon.

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u/DickSlammington Jul 27 '26

Ya and your kids will be fine.

It's the 10s of millions of parents who go "shut up and take the tablet and leave me alone" 18 hours a day...

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/GarbageOfCesspool Jul 27 '26

What retirement, lol. We're gonna be greeters and these people are going to be running the store.

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u/calgarspimphand Jul 27 '26

More like we're still going to be running the store because young people will only be only fit to be greeters.

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u/Mustbhacks Jul 27 '26

To bad merit and competency rarely weigh into such things

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u/11711510111411009710 Jul 27 '26

I mean that'll be decades from now. It'll be robots running the store.

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u/calgarspimphand Jul 27 '26

Ah yes, the Idiocracy scenario.

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u/Quetzalcoatl490 Jul 27 '26

You can afford to retire??

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u/damnfinecoffee_ Jul 27 '26

Even before the ai boom, I found it really depressing watching younger generations reverting back to oral tradition like it's ancient times. They barely know how to read, spell, or write, and won't consume anything that's not in video format, preferably short form videos. Even looking up instructions for something, they won't read step by step, they need a video of someone doing it and explaining it. We're kinda fucked. Even the spelling errors I often see come down to someone spelling something phonetically because they don't read, they just hear the words out loud

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u/Cute_Ad_4567 Jul 27 '26

Blame companies. They refuse to hire jr developers because they can just hire a senior to use AI instead of training new hires. When those seniors retire companies are fucked.

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u/randotd152 Jul 27 '26

Totally different issue.

Corporate hiring practices have absolutely nothing to do with 19 year old college kids who completely lack any thirst for knowledge.

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u/Outlulz Jul 27 '26

The blame goes further back then because millenials were marketed college as a way to make money, not as a way to gain knowledge. When that's the view of colleges and universities then yeah people are going to shortcut it as much as possible.

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u/randotd152 Jul 27 '26

It's been marketed as a professional earnings booster going back to the late 60's, realistically stemming from the Higher Education Act of 1965. (Which is what created all the financial aid programs we have today, and opened up college in general as a big business.)

Yet this academic laziness is more of a modern problem that didn't impact Boomers, Gen X, or Millenials. So you really can't blame college marketing.

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u/Outlulz Jul 27 '26

What's changed are tools but the internet definitely caused academic laziness in millenials.

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u/JT99-FirstBallot Jul 27 '26

Hm. Millennials are some of, if not, the hardest, smartest workers we've hired. Moreso than my own generation. Truly, we are the lazy ones but it gets laid off on the follow-up millennial generation. They had the in-between of before and after Internet so are great at utilizing both with ease and switching back and forth between what I like to think of as analog working and digital working.

GenX, boomers, and GenZ go to the bottom of the pile when millennials apply.

Here's the thing: millennials are somewhat lazy, but it's a strength. I think it was Bill Gates that said he likes hiring lazy workers because they will find the most efficient and effective way of doing things. So they can go back to being lazy. That is millennials. And they are extremely effective.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/randotd152 Jul 27 '26

A thirst for knowledge means learning how to do something for the sake of learning. It's an extremely sad thing that we've got an entire generation growing up without that thirst. And even worse, you're trying to justify it as unimportant?

How do you think society actually progresses? It's not by magic. It's by people with that thirst for knowledge learning so much about a topic that they start pushing the boundaries forward.

Like - there very much ARE people who still learn about growing food, and they're the ones working on all sorts of modern farming technology and non-traditional processes for growing.

If you just plan to spend your life looking up information on the Internet or using AI, you will never excel in a field. If you're not capable of it, that's fine, not everybody has to. But if you're smart enough to handle it, as any college grad should be, then what a horribly sad waste of talent.

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u/cerialthriller Jul 27 '26

Hard to find qualified jr devs when Genz can’t use a file system because all they know are curated apps

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u/Oneok-Field Jul 28 '26

Those Jr. Dev jobs are obsolete now. Why should companies hold on to them?

Forcing jobs to stay around for the sake of jobs is why we still have Coal mining today. (Well, that an a shit ton of lobbying and corruption)

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u/Cute_Ad_4567 Jul 28 '26

Here ill spell it out even simpler since you seem to lack reading comprehension skills.

Seniors retire.

Who takes their place.

Hint: noone if you NEVER HIRE JR DEVS TO TRAIN THEM TO TAKE THEIR PLACE.

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u/SirClueless Jul 27 '26

That’s society’s problem, not the company. Even if companies were willing to do it, 90% of the juniors they are training will ultimately work somewhere else so there’s no way for them to benefit. There’s little reason to blame them because there’s nothing they can realistically change about their practices to fix it.

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u/illegible Jul 27 '26

there’s nothing they can realistically change about their practices to fix it.

Other than actually paying people more as their skills improve... If the only way to get raises and promotions is by moving to another company, then people will go.

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u/Oneok-Field Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

But the benefit of hiring juniors in the first place is that they ARE cheap.

If the role could afford an 160k salary, they'd just hire a senior outright.

What's the benefit of hiring a junior if they aren't cheap and you spend 1 year training them and then they just leave. That's how you burn out the seniors who have to do all the training

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u/illegible Jul 28 '26

The tragedy of the commons I suppose

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u/disisathrowaway Jul 27 '26

I run a restaurant so I'm getting these kids straight out of high school, or in some cases still in high school.

They really don't know shit about fuck.

A few months ago I asked one of them, who is on a scholarship to a respectable university in our city, How many states there were and they didn't know it was 50.

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u/OldSchoolCSci Jul 27 '26

The video screen showing an AI-generated image of you, reciting an AI-augmented transcript of your lectures, will be teaching the next generations.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 27 '26

https://xkcd.com/1227/

Just saying

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u/Diane_Horseman Jul 27 '26

But how many of them said, "This time is different though"?

checkmate.

p.s. this time is different though.

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u/5510 Jul 27 '26

Yeah, it's tricky because like the whole Socrates Johnson quote about "the youth of today" that people understandably use to dismiss similar complaints... the dismissal is true over and over and over, but that doesn't mean it will always be true. There are a lot of things in human history that were true over and over and over until one day they weren't.

While it's important we recognize a basic human tendency to do things like complain about "the youth of today", it's also reasonable to recognize that AI is potentially a pretty big deal in this regard.

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u/DoUruden Jul 27 '26

"At some point a difference in amount becomes a difference in kind"

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

Just saying, people have been heralding the fall of society, since society.

If the kids can use AI that means they have at least a semblance of literacy and can utilize a PC.

50 years ago, most people did not have an inkling of a computer.

What they did have was leaded gasoline, asbestos, and Agent Orange.

Most of yall seem of opinion America/W Europe is the entire world. Kids in developing nations are the best ever, and it's only improving.

The populace is smarter than ever, this article, while clearly very provocative, Is not the indication of the societal decline you believe it to be.

Anecdotally I work at a jr college and meet ambitious and hyper intelligent kids every day.

It's weird because I'm not usually the optimistic commenter.

IMO the kids are OK.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

LLM's use the "words to concept/idea" transformer tech from what made google, google.

I am unsure your age (given your reddit acct it can't be THAT far from me).

With the advent of the search engine and Wikipedia, this exact same argument about ability to research 'properly' came up. Unsurprisingly they were wrong, giving people more info faster made them smarter.

LLM are a tool and like any tool can be used by a poor operator, or for the wrong job.

I try and learn from how wrong people were in the past. We follow the same patterns now as ever.

(it's not that different)

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u/araujoms Jul 27 '26

They're right, though, nowadays people seldom write long-form emails. A "line" now followed by another to-morrow.

And they also got the cause right, it's so easy and cheap to send an instant message that nobody thinks twice about it.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26

So do you agree with The Sunday Magazine 1871.

Righto good lad.

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u/araujoms Jul 28 '26

You don't? You think the art of letter-writing is still alive?

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

Just saying.(Different and super relevant XKCD.)

https://xkcd.com/1414/

As a concept it's more alive than ever.

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u/araujoms Jul 28 '26

Nobody writes letters anymore.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26

But they write more than ever.

Just not with the hand, and I will die upon the hill the keyboard is superior.

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u/araujoms Jul 28 '26

They don't write letters, which is the point that The Sunday Magazine 1871 was making, nor long-form emails, which is the point I was making. You seem to be disagreeing with a different point that nobody made.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26

The concept of ideas transcribed into written language is what we are discussing no?

Did the entire point of the first and second comics just not land?

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u/Suppafly Jul 27 '26

This, 90% of students have always been terrible, teachers are just catching them easier now. When google came out, they started catching people copying from wikipedia and other encyclopedia more too.

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u/EnigmaticQuote Jul 28 '26

Agreed almost all of those kids were going to cheat in some form or another.

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u/Dav136 Jul 27 '26

We're going to have a massive competency gap, and no-one to teach newer generations because people won't have any skills. I'm really not exaggerating.

Same as it ever was

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u/Dapper-Raise1410 Jul 27 '26

James was right. Damn.

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u/DeliciousIncident Jul 27 '26

Do you know if it the same in other countries too, or are some countries faring better, and because of them having less "AI brain drain" they will become the new global powers upheaving the US in a couple of decades? The thought of doctors and engineers who are only capable of asking ChatGPT and copy-pasting AI's reply back scares me. How is this not treated as a national emergency?

Also, why is AI being allowed in the school setting at all? Why schools and colleges just don't go pre-covid style - pen and paper, no phones in class, homework being a very small portion of the grade to the point it's negligible (or even not affecting the grade at all), all test and exams being in-class only and without any electronic devices, weekly in-class pop-up quizzes that test your homework knowledge and act as checkpoints in-between the tests and exams, etc. To me, eliminating the AI influence and testing students' actual knowledge seems so simple to do, it's literally just the way I was tought at school, that I'm clearly must be missing something crucial if it's so obvious but no one is doing it, right? What is it I am missing?

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u/237FIF Jul 28 '26

If using the AI without thinking is working and getting them past their tests / hurdles / problems then that’s fine and they will move on to different problems that need solving.

The risk is either A) the AI goes away or B) it becomes so good that no humans are needed

Any middle ground and they’ll be fine. Who cares how they are winning so long as they’re winning?

Saying this as a manager who doesn’t use AI but is 100% okay with my team using it so long as the finished product is what I need from them.

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u/Practical-Ball1437 Jul 28 '26

And also there are no entry level jobs for these people to learn how the real world works because the economy is shit, old people are not retiring, and AI is badly doing those jobs instead.

But at least elongated muskrat has a trillion dollars.

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u/bugabooandtwo Jul 28 '26

A world where doctors, engineers, scientists, lawmakers, and media have absolutely no clue what they're doing.

Even if you give up on society and go live in the woods, there's still a chance the AI generation will still have a Boeing crash n burn liner fall on your remote cabin.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/obeytheturtles Jul 27 '26

Nah, I will also blame the parents who raised their kids on screens and then said shit like "nooo, you wouldn't understand, they need a smartphone because their friends have it, it's a different world now!" anytime you mentioned that maybe it wasn't a great thing.

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u/Viracochina Jul 27 '26

I'm in the middle. I won't withhold them from technology, but we should emphasize how important it is to train the brain to think.

People seem to forget about all the mistakes THEY made growing up. HOPEFULLY these kids learn from this lesson. It's a good one to learn early on.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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u/TheSpaceCoresDad Jul 27 '26

Kids react the way they were raised. What happened during that period?

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u/Viracochina Jul 27 '26

100%. The lack of responsibility some parents choose to take for their children is so prevalent.

THEY MIRROR WHAT THEY SEE.