A professor used white font to hide instructions to throw off students using an AI chatbot to cheat on their midterm.
Professors should not be wasting time on gotcha traps for cheats. Mid terms should be hand written on paper.
AI summary also can be copied by hand. But in exams the use of AI can be filtered even the internet access itself over the server of the school as only network access. In a lot of schools in Europe the network signal is blocked, only WiFi/LAN from the school server. Signal jammer are even often used in opera- and concert buildings. No internet > no valid AI
Here isn’t possible to connect to anything which isn’t controlled, less in exams.
The page throws a temper tantrum when you try to reject cookies.
he gave the students an opportunity to contest their grade. (Only two did, showing at least that they do feel shame.)
Does it show that? I may be misunderstanding what “to contest their grade” means, but if I got caught using AI like that (in some distant, weird, unspeakably dark universe), I’d probably be too embarrassed to even speak to that teacher again.
Gibson shared some of the most examples
no notes
Does it show that?
I think it was weirdly worded and meant that the 2 had no shame and that everyone else did.
Gibson shared some of the most examples
The author doesn’t know how to spell egregious, and didn’t use AI to add it in.
Truly some of the examples of all time.
I’m a student and everyone including teachers gave up on work cuz they’re too dependent on AI. Glad I survived and came out of that slopverse
It is the next level of laziness to not check what AI generates for you.
If they developed a way to catch students taking photo of their screen there would be 3x more caught.
32 out of 35 is pretty much all of them.
The really stupid thing is that the students are the ones that are cheating themselves. Higher education is not cheap and cheating your way through it leaves you coming out the other end stupider and less qualified to take on the world as an adult.
School is now taught in a way that the objective is to get the correct answer. That’s what teaching to the test and refusing to fail kids leads to. Students think that once they pass the test and the course is done then you have hit a check point and never have to think about it ever again, just like a video game. This is a philosophical attitude that there is zero point in thinking for yourself and that the magical addictive rectangle will guide you through all of life’s adventures.
They were gonna be stupid either way. That was the point of ruining the education system. This actually helps the system, because now employers can justify once again raising the requirements of a job posting “because look at how badly all these college graduates are performing”, and then the next generation is going to be told they won’t get a good job with just a bachelors degree, they need a PhD. Then more student debt - more money for parasitic organizations and the gov’t.
Shit is supposed to be hard. That’s called learning.
Now here is the thing. I’m terrible at writing. Plus I have ADHD. English has never been my strong suit. I’ll start a thought, get sidetracked, start another thought, leave out words, etc. I’m an engineering, math, science kinda guy. Case in point, back in the day (like 40 years ago) my SATs were very skewed. My math score was like 780 but the verbal was 200 points lower. If AI had existed back then, I would have written the paper or whatever outline of my own ideas, and then had the tool make it coherent. LLMs are good at language. That’s what they really are. They are not smart, they don’t have original ideas. They are word guessers. I’d treat it like a spell/grammar checker on acid. Having the LLM ( I really don’t like calling it AI because it really isn’t AGI… at least not yet) do the entire assignment is just short cutting the entire process of what the university is there for.
Just my 2¢
weird opinion
They still have a degree in the end.
Exactly! 96 out of 35 would have been caught.
That’s a nice sentiment, one that I agree with, but in the real world anyone who cheated their way to a diploma and wasn’t caught still has that diploma, and still gets the job the diploma is for.
Sure, sometimes karma get them back, but if it’s not an applied field they often fail upwards until they learn on-the-job enough to stick around and collect a decent paycheck, or they become a thorn to other around them who are actually competent, but not enough that they get fired.
I don’t have a solution, it’s more of a rant, but I wish I knew how to hold people accountable for things like this.
Love it love it love it
Haha simple way to expose automated BOWKY reliance.
He should have done a follow-up survey asking the students why they felt it was okay to use LLMs and not proofread their results. This could have been a much greater learning opportunity and also drive home that the point wasn’t to shame them.
You’d have to be really dumb to get caught by this.
People have been using the white font trick in job applications for years now.
Firstly they’re students. They haven’t done a job application yet - and quite frankly, a lot of them don’t know obvious shit because, well, they’re young.
But also, a lot of “professionals” who really should know better do stupid shit too.
This has been common practice in schools for several years now. Students are well aware of this tactic.
Im surprised that some students were caught off guard, because anyone in Dark mode can easily see the white font.
and quite frankly, a lot of them don’t know obvious shit because, well, they’re young.
Being young or being a student doesn’t mean you’re dumb. Also even if you haven’t it’s still something you think about and discuss. Especially by your third and fourth years, it’s something you should be actively thinking about more and more.
I finished school two years ago by the way. Not trying to give you hope for the future or anything because a lot of people are dumb but they should know better.
The authority people look for, for guidance, isn’t there anymore.
The lesson here is that US university diploma is worth as much as toilet paper. They have a profit motive to not expel cheating students. EU countries should stop accepting US diplomas as legally valid.
They do not even care to test students properly - how can they even use AI? Why not let the write the answers to a midterm on paper in a supervised hall? Or some kind of secure computing environment Seriously what is going on lol. They aren’t being tested at all really.
The lesson here is that US university diploma is worth as much as toilet paper
That is not new, and it’s not just in the US.
My degrees haven’t mattered in a long time - my resume is long enough for that. But when they still did matter, I made damn sure I told the headhunter at all job interviews I went to that I got my degrees from this and that year, when it was common knowledge that getting degrees from those unis at that time still meant something.
I’d love to have heard the argument from the two students challenging their failing grade for that
A reasonable defense would be screen readers, or any other accessibility features. With the exception of headings or paragraph tags, formatting information isn’t relayed by a screen reader. Anyone using one would see the white text as normal text.
I’ve heard enough stories from teachers adding weird requests to instructions to see if students actually read the instructions, that I would say Madagascar as requested if I were using a screen reader, or the browser’s reader mode while working on the assignment.
Depends on the prompt they gave to build their defense…
probably they have grad school riding on those grades probably? grad schools, MD, PHD, DONT take very kindly to have 0s or Withdraws on your transcript.
Ah yes, then they can spend thousands more on an even fancier sheet of paper. It’s a shame they are devaluing their degrees like this, because as the world catches on about how common this is, they will not garner much respect for having completed one.
Certainly when I’m hiring I have usually expected that someone with a university education might have good written communication or language skills. But now I’m realizing that this may no longer be sensible.
If they’re doing this in other classes then they’re either going to get caught and fail or they won’t get caught but won’t have learned anything. What are these people going to be doing out in the world when they get older?
They’ll be getting their MBAs.
depends how universitiy grad programs calculate your gpa, some with take Ws, and 0s into consideration when it comes to calculating it.
They can’t get a master’s if they don’t graduate with a bachelor’s first.
I’d agree, but it seems universities don’t fail anyone anymore, particularly not lucrative out-of-state tuition payers
FWIW in-state students are usually just as lucrative for universities, since the tuition discount is paid by state grants.
By the time they get a job, AI will be doing all the work anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter
No it won’t. What the professor did illustrates this. You have to have a human proof reading AI. No matter how smart computers get, they’ll always be dumb as shit.
The people demanding AI integration don’t care if it works. They were sold that it increases productivity so it must be worth it.
Honestly, if you get caught doing this, you should be expelled and blacklisted from all colleges and universities by SSN, as well as put on an international registry.
that doesnt really fit the crime. in most universities you will get automatic zero on that assignment, and may get reported to the dean, thats about it. if the professor is making an example they can choose to make them fail the whole course automatically or force them to withdraw the class. this isnt expel worthy though. things that are expel worthy or severe violence, or academic dismissal(you fail too many classes on too many semesters), or you have a cheating ring.
That’s awful steep. I dislike AI as much as the next guy, but as a former college prof I don’t think I could see myself being that heavy handed.
Fail the paper, sure, but depending on past submissions I’d consider an alternative assignment. Otherwise, good luck when you take the program again.
I think it’s not so steep if students are told beforehand. Tell them what counts as cheating. Tell them the consequences. Tell them it’s serious.
In university I always had to sign a little text that informed us that we are not allowed to cheat and that doing so would lead to failing the test and potentially getting expelled.
Brother there isn’t even a national sex offender registry. You want to treat students who use AI worse than we treat pedophiles?
You’re right, you definitely should treat sex offenders way harsher.
Also if a school says “don’t do X or you WILL fail the test and MIGHT get expelled” and then you proceed to do X then I think it’s on you and not ‘bad treatment’ at all. Especially if you do X repeatedly.
I did have one student fail for using AI. It was such an awful submission.
I also had multiple students that I believe used AI to help in the creation of some assignments, but I built in presentations including Q&A to ensure they could speak to the subject.
No situation I came across was bad enough to warrant expulsion except for one case of blatant plagiarism in which a student had accessed another students computer and reworded a major assignment, but this had nothing to do with AI.
Bonus: I regularly ran in-class activities where I’d split the class into small groups on the Human side and on the AI side and give them the same tasks to complete. Humans always won.
Even if those students are told beforehand. Completely destroying any future chance on education because of a stupid thing they did once when you were young is not realistic.
Even in your example, they only get potentially expelled from a single school.
Yeah true. The blacklisting goes way too far.
What good will that do?
Imagine…they didn’t. Even. Read it.
They deserve the failure grade
