A professor used white font to hide instructions to throw off students using an AI chatbot to cheat on their midterm.
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.
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.
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.
A more advanced version of this: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2024/hiding-and-finding-text-with-unicode-tags/
It is the next level of laziness to not check what AI generates for you.
In researches it’s never good to use an LLM, I use sometimes an AI search assistant (concept and semantic searrch) since several years, which use and summarize the results from relevant webcontent in real time with the corresponding sources, which permits to contrast it (always a fact check needed in internet, with and also without AI, in general too much BS in the web), not slop created by the AI itself. This is IMHO a legit use of AI, as helpfull tool, not one to substitute my own research.
My software dev colleagues don’t do it and they’re getting paid. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest to hear that a bunch of students wouldn’t, lol
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.
Man it’s so sad to see the state of academia right now. The high water usage and noise pollution affects the entire world, especially in Madagascar.
it was poor before, when they were giving out participation grades in HS, with covid+AI its double whammy after another disaster.
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 dont think the situation is very common, USA students going to the EU, usually the ones seeking employment are often at the phd levels, which is another can of worms.
students just get ZEROS for the test, or the course, or they get a notice from the dean. academic dismissal(expel) is usually used for people who are failing thier classes more than a couple semesters. maybe the more prestigious school wil expel people for cheating, but they would probably have to prove it, and then avoid a lawsuit by the students.
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.
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.
why did they contest it, they wernt going to pass the class anyways, its better to drop in anonymity, then to out yourself. or they had something else riding on it, like they needed it for grad school, or to take the next higher level class?
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.
Love it love it love it
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
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.
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.
Exactly! 96 out of 35 would have been caught.
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 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.
They still have a degree in the end.
The authority people look for, for guidance, isn’t there anymore.
Haha simple way to expose automated BOWKY reliance.
Good on him for catching them out, but they should’ve received more severe a punishment for such blatant and lazy cheating.
And explaining how you caught them doesn’t make them less likely to cheat in the future, it simply makes them less likely to be caught doing so.
It’s been a good long while, but when I was a student, cheating got you automatically expelled - temporarily for a small “casual” case of plagiarism, permanently for anything more egregious.
I guess things have changed.
Yeah. When I was a student, I got sent to an academic misconduct panel just suspected of cheating, and was told I absolutely could be expelled if they found out I had actually done it.
And sure, in reality somebody had copied my work and I could prove it, so I was fine - but at least they bothered to actually investigate in my example!
I know policies are different between institutions, but these students got caught red-handed not just plagiarising, but outright faking coursework submissions. Why is there no investigation into their previous coursework, no misconduct panel interviews, literally nothing apart from failing the specific part of the mid-term they were caught cheating on.
No wonder they don’t give a damn when the punishment for being caught has so little teeth!
As you say, times have changed for the worse.
Well, the source for this story is the professor in a short form video, who doesn’t explicitly say there wasn’t any further punishment afaik.
I haven’t actually seen it though because the fucking idiot himself is equally morally bankrupt by posting it on a weapon run by Beijing.
Colleges have become profit obsessed and students are the cash cows. Expulsion is bad for revenue.
Policy where I teach is that it’s up to the professor’s discretion, though that’s mostly because it’s not always as easy to prove as this. There’s a boilerplate anti cheating section we have in our syllabus that says it’s a reportable offense that may lead to academic probation or expulsion.
Honestly, it’s also a ton of paperwork so I’ve just opted to fail them since usually my papers aren’t so easily answered via an LLM and rather than tell them I caught them cheating, I simply point out they missed rubric item 2, 5 and 6 so it’s something solid, not my speculation. But I also haven’t white texted them yet, lol.
Well you see, we don’t have DEI any more.
Instead we simply have literally no standards, for anyone!
That’s how meritocracy works, right?
Removed by mod
I presume that the use of gen AI is not considered plagiarism.
They probably have some kind of lame policy around “responsible use of gen AI” or something.
And explaining how you caught them doesn’t make them less likely to cheat in the future, it simply makes them less likely to be caught doing so.
They didn’t even read what the AI spewed. They aren’t paying attention at all, they’re making zero effort. I don’t think they’ll be less likely to be caught, because they’ll never come across the explanation.
32/35?! Cheesus Crackers. The microplastics were already making us stupid, now whatever’s left is being melted by corpos.
I think it’s supposed to mean 35 people failed, 32 of those because of AI.
That makes a lot more sense. Having almost all your students proven cheaters would be catastrophic, and I can’t imagine he would have remained so relatively calm and matter-of-fact.
It’s also important to remember that that’s 32 college students who didn’t proofread. How many more noticed his shenanigans when highlighting the text, or simply used LLMs for only part of their essay?
the university would immediately investigating if all students failed the class. they usually do this if a large proportion dont show up to class as well.
I don’t think this is the case for every school and professor, depending on how hard it is to get a professor for the subject they teach.
Personal anecdote ahead:
There’s one at my school that has over half the class drop every single semester, every single class because his expectations for freshman in a core class are more in line with what you should be expecting of seniors or grad students. Who knows how many that don’t drop fail, because he responds to requests for assistance or advice by essentially telling you to figure it out yourself.
But he teaches classes that tons of international students want to take, so he makes the school too much money (they still keep the money if you don’t drop before the 2 week drop deadline, way too early for most to see how fucked his classes are).
The funny thing is I took a class of his not knowing he was like that bc it was online, happened to be in my wheelhouse and I got an A after spending a stupid amount of time and effort on my papers. I needed another class and decided to take him in person because I genuinely did learn a lot from the other class, and oh boy… noped right the fuck out of there after making a genuine effort to see if I would be able to even do the project worth 1/3rd of our grade.
similar situation, we had a math teach in CC, who was teaching above the material for the class ( getting into matrices, and discrete math in adv alg class) 2/3 of the class dropped, get this nobody in the class knew he actually dropped the students himself(because they wernt passing because he was teaching material way more advanced than the class subject, and he forgot to tell them) only after i actually voiced my concern, did the other students bailed, otherwise they would took the whole class wasted thier time. he taught at night and a different UNI as well, im guessing thats why the school dint catch on. if only i knew about RATEMYPROF i wouldve avoided him, and many others to.(most people ended with a W), i have suspicion he hates teaching CC CLASSES(he would often call people terrible for not learning) and did say people do graduate HS with a low skill in math. since it was a night class it was more annoying, because it was more material jammed in one day, and people have to slog through the semester just to take night class.
another course, a higher math class i was in, most of the student dont bother showing up til test time, like 75% of the class is gone most of the time, the school noticed it somehow and sent an auditor to sit in the class, i assume its because they w ill cancel the class because people wernt showing up to the class anymore. The students did get wind of it, and everyone showed up when the auditor did, so nothing happened. it was an easy class though, and the teacher was retiring soon then anyways.
It’s rare but with certain cohorts I’ve watched it happen. And one instance it was basically an entire class that just copied and pasted the answers to their book work off of the internet.
They all basically use the same source so everyone of them use the same boring metaphor, etc.
“Thirty-two of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response,” he explained in a viral TikTok, sounding incredulous. “And apparently they didn’t proofread it.”
In don’t know, that sounds like only three people passed that portion the mid-term.
That professor was more charitable than I would have been, not failing all those students out of the entire class immediately.
Back when I was in university, if you got caught cheating, you got expelled immediately. Now, all you get is possibly a slightly lower score on your midterm?
This is bullshit
I hate how many posts on LinkedIn are “AI is inevitable, we might as well use it everywhere”… um, no. Develop critical thinking and the ability to do it on your own and then, maybe, just maybe, use it as a tool, not a replacement.
Why fail the other three? Only 32 out of 35 were caught.
I hoped it was obvious when I said “all those students” I was talking about the ones that were caught blatantly cheating.
Because my guess is that you don’t understand why you’re being downvoted:
You don’t have to cheat to fail a test. Some people take a test and fail. That happened for three people.
No, I’m pretty sure he had 35 students total take the exam and that 32 of them failed. I think that the person above me meant to say all of the students which cheated should be failed from the entire class not just the test, but it not being explicit caused confusion.
Then why are you assuming he would fail the other three?
Ah, I see. Being pedantic about the use of the word “all”. I applaud the pedantry. Have a down vote. You earned it. I always appreciate hardworking pedants.
I just told you
