2026-07-27T14:41:57.63237Z

Nobody_Special@Nobody_Special@piefed.social

Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the…

www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html

TechSpotProfessor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AIIn an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students' midterm. It was about the...

2026-07-27T17:34:33.314485Z

Bob Robertson IX @Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de

⁨18⁩d

Replying to @⁨Nobody_Special@piefed.social⁩

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

So, 3 students proofread the output and removed the offending sentences from their answer?

⁨Jul⁩ ⁨27⁩, ⁨2026⁩, ⁨17:34⁩en

2026-07-27T17:51:33.984179Z

adarza@adarza@lemmy.ca

⁨18⁩d

Replying to @⁨Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de⁩

3 of 35 is not an unreasonable number of students who might have actually done the work themselves.

2026-07-27T17:56:03.454242Z

Bob Robertson IX @Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de

⁨18⁩d

Replying to @⁨adarza@lemmy.ca⁩

It’s also a reasonable number of students who would read the answer before just blindly putting it into the answer sheet.

2026-07-28T12:56:54.143196Z

nickiwest@nickiwest@lemmy.world

⁨17⁩d

Replying to @⁨Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de⁩

And this is the contemporary teacher’s dilemma. Which is it? Did they do the work themselves, or did they simply proofread the machine’s work? Those skills are not the same.

One is evidence that they understood and synthesized the information. The other is evidence that they could identify literal nonsense and remove it from their answer.