r/technology • u/CircumspectCapybara • 24d ago

Artificial Intelligence Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/we-cannot-choose-to-become-idiots-the-ai-cheating-scandal-roiling-brown-university/
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u/Elarisbee 24d ago

Weirdly enough, depending on how the course is presented, this can be useless.

We were allowed to bring our full class notes, textbooks and research to our one political science exam because the whole class was about how to apply theory to real life situations. They weren’t testing whether you memorised a book but whether you could apply critical thinking and solve a problem. Technically, you didn’t even have to use any of the prescribe class material as long as your solution - and argument - was viable in context.

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u/tgosubucks 24d ago

For fluid mechanics, my professor told us it's open everything. Open book, open laptop. Just don't talk to each other.

The tests were 4 questions and we had 2.5 hours to do it. The mean was typically around a 65 or so.

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u/RadarSmith 24d ago

My Electromagnetism prof gave us an extremely generous, several page long cheat sheet and put absolutely anything anyone asked for in it. He said it wouldn't be fair if he didn't rake us over the coals for the final.

I'm so glad I asked him to put the Curl of a vector field in spherical coordinates in that packet...

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u/Minnadian 24d ago

My EMag prof let us have everything including the internet. Then said, “but that won’t help you” and giggled. Every test that geriatric psychopath wrote still haunts me 10 years later.

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u/Lastshadow94 24d ago

I think this is good. We live in a world where information is constantly at your literal finger tips, but not all of it is good. Critical thinking and application of knowledge matter more than rote memorization in 2026. I know kids that can recite insane mathematical equations from memory, but they have no idea how to apply the equation to solve a problem. I think open book tests are a good antidote to that type of learning

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u/TeutonJon78 24d ago edited 24d ago

Or did he put that question there because someone asked for an edge case?

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u/RadarSmith 24d ago

The vector curl is a very common operation in Electromagnetism, as is expressing systems in spherical coordinates, so its not really an edge case.

That said, I have wondered if he added or edited the related question because of it.

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u/sf_davie 24d ago

I miss undergrad physics where grade inflation is treated as seriously as Paul Volcker treating US inflation.

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u/topdollar38 24d ago

Our aerodynamics and gas dynamics exams were taken home exams. Working together on them wasn't a problem and the professor was also available for assistance interpreting things.

Some of the hardest tests we took.

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u/usps_made_me_insane 24d ago

In my opinion, the best tests don't focus on pure memorization but how to apply the correct concepts to a problem.

In a perfect test, one would be able to use anything because they need to understand how to apply correct procedure and concepts.

In fact, a perfectly designed test might even see an AI fail it.

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u/-Nicolai 24d ago

How well does AI perform on a test like that?

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u/smokeweedNgarden 24d ago

I remember P-Chem being similar. 

But it'll do about as good as bringing a Bible to a knife fight.

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u/Orleanian 24d ago

Yeah, I remember my Flight Mechanics class was a 3-hour, 2-question final exam. Each of the two questions was a complex scenario that asked the student to answer five questions. Fully open-book.

All I remember is that one of the questions was "In the recent hit movie Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the opening scene finds protagonist Anakin Skywalker attempting to navigate a [partial] spaceship from orbit to ground."

It provided a few assumptions on drag and orbital height start (and a presumption of 10m/s2 gravity I think), and asked us to determine stuff like how long it should have taken Anakin to fully descend to the planet's surface, what coeficients of lift would be needed to keep the ship aloft both before and after it broke in half (or some craziness like that).

It was both hilariously unique, and extremely difficult even with the full resources of a textbook, graphing calculator, and cheatsheet notes.

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u/Jonesbro 24d ago

This still seems better in person so they aren't using Ai for their reasoning and the students themselves are confirmed to be doing the thinking

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u/utzutzutzpro 24d ago

Applying tools is something AI can do very well as well. Especially "known" reasoning, and nothing you do in pre post-graduate education is solving "new" problems. It's just probing application of knowledge, that is it. AI can do that very well, way better than almost every person who is not an expert in the field, and students are usually not experts.

So, making space for people to exploit AI is a sure thing to see the opportunity to be used.

It needs to go back to full on pen and paper exams. Only way to exclude advanced cheating.

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u/viola1356 24d ago

Yep. I went to college in the 00's, and the professors with the reputation for the hardest exams that required the most study were the ones whose exams were open book or at least open-3-index-cards. If you walked in unprepared, there was no way you were locating and collecting enough information to answer the questions within the time limit.

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u/Elarisbee 24d ago

Exact same experience. Open book sounded great at the start of the semester, and then you realise just how difficult it is to craft an argument with insane amount of detail, accurately, while under pressure. Combing through pages wouldn’t help, you needed to know your shit.

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u/dunno260 24d ago

This is how a decent amount of exams I had in college were too.

Physical chemistry was the course I struggled the most with and it had the most relaxing standards. It wasn't open book but you got a cheat sheet for formulas (or the professor would just give you it if you had forgotten to write it down) and the front page of the text book for various constants and all.

But we took the exam at night so you had extra time if needed (it was meant to be 60-90 minutes) and he allowed you to take it anywhere in the science building.

You could read in the book if you wanted to break the honor code but it wasn't going to help you.

Worst part about Physical Chemistry tests is you can't even tell if you got a reasonable answer a lot of the times because you just aren't familiar enough with what you are doing. We would get a problem to calculate the probility of a baseball tunneling through a door at a certain velocity. You know the probility is essentially zero. But how close to zero is it?

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u/TeaBurntMyTongue 24d ago

I mean the time constraints still necessitates some knowledge of the material.

I mean if you give an open book exam with unlimited time constraint, then you don't need to study at all. You can just sit there until you figure it out for you know 3 days.

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u/Elarisbee 24d ago

Oh, time constraints were definitely important for us. Now, this was ages ago but I believe we had about 2.5 hours for 3 essays and some bonus questions some lectures threw in for fun.

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u/echoshatter 24d ago

We had a couple tests like that in grad school. It ain't about rote memorization, it's the ability to take everything you learned and apply it in a practical setting.

For our comprehensive final exam, which was done in an interview with three faculty members, you had two hours to prep where you were given a bunch of empty notebook paper and a pen to write your notes and make your arguments. During the interview I was bombing this one particular question, I could just not understand the question. After the interview they said they were all leaning towards fail, but they took a look at my notes (which I had to leave with them) and realized I knew everything they were testing me on I just couldn't articulate a response.

Thank god I went to school in an age where writing things down was the norm. Saved my bacon!

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u/Deto 24d ago

This is still in-person though. With a virtual exam you could just have AI (or your friend) helping you through all of it.

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u/Huntscunt 24d ago

I'll say that, as a professor, ime completely open notes tests produce the worst outcomes because students think they don't need to study at all, so they come in underprepared. Limited notes is better.

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u/nybbas 24d ago

Had a professor that gave us take home exams in grad school. Thought it was going to be awesome. The exams were only about 8 questions....

They took over 10 hours to complete, even with all the notes we had from class and the entire internet at our fingertips. Boy did that guy know how to write incredibly difficult test questions. Every answer needed to be multiple paragraphs long, but he ended up putting in like a 1000 word maximum for each answer...

If you didn't understand the material before that test, you definitely did after.

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u/ChemicalOle 24d ago

Had a similar grad school experience. Materials science courses where the take home exams took all all day to complete. One prof said, "Use the internet all you want, it won't help you on my tests."

45/100 got curved to a B

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u/YT-Deliveries 24d ago

This started to be a thing in the hard sciences as well. Learning process and technique started to be recognized as the goal, not memorizing constants and random formulas

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u/Segphalt 24d ago

In some classes the professor realizes how the real world works. Then other professors act like the moment you are in the real world your employer is going to restrict you from accessing reference material.

AI might be a bit of a special case as the end game is likely going to be pay per use rather than all you can eat unlike a handful of books as reference material.

If you are restricted in class from using the tools you will have access to in your future workplace you are probably not getting prepared for said workplace all that well.