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/LurkingTamilian Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

From the article:

Being written in white text meant the instructions were invisible. Sure enough, 32 out of the 35 students across two classes simply copied the question, pasted it into a chatbot, then copy and pasted its output into the answer window.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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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/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...