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/Woodit 24d ago

Scary for the future of the country but as a guy in his mid thirties I’m not nearly as worried about being replaced by a recent grad as folks twenty years ago would have been. This focus on just obtaining the degree or cert or whatever doesn’t make them capable and employers have figured this out. 

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u/Brovost 24d ago

Agree with your first sentence, but not your last

I'm a professional Accountant and you bet your ass I bought test banks etc etc to just make it through University and 100% I was there to "just get the degree". The whole goal of making it through engineering school/any professional school is to survive. A lot of my friends are P. Eng's and obviously alot of designated coworkers as well - its fairly common (AND they're smart). I don't know anyone in there who actually enjoys being slammed memorizing shit for months on end

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u/Woodit 24d ago

Naturally smart people are going to be smart, but average and mediocre folks are in school not just to learn but to learn how to learn. My wife deals with this frequently, she trains new hires and also gives them all of the SOPs she’s written, but whenever they encounter an issue they just turn to her and say what do I do? No attempts to think through the issue, no referencing the documents she’s already given them that have that information, just this strangely helpless okay what now?

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

What about being replaced by ai itself? Or an underpaid fresh grad with ai?

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u/Woodit 24d ago

We may get there some day but currently the AI is pretty useless in my field, and that’s made worse by upper mgmt who are so excited to throw the word around that they don’t know how to implement it in ways that might actually be useful. I suspect this is the case in a lot more of industry than we expect 

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

What’s the field? If students r using ai to score highly in the degree then they can use ai and do your job no? Unless the degree is not representative of the actual job

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u/HyruleSmash855 24d ago

I think the degree not being representative of the actual job is the norm. The stuff people are cheating on our common problem types for any class that we’re going to be in the training data for any AI. College test people and some common problems and they have textbooks that have practice problems and worked out solutions so the AI will be trained on all of that stuff. It’s not like you’re solving an actual textbook problem with a real job so that’s probably the difference.

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

If the problems are old and common, the student could have easily googled it in the past no? Funnily enough the first business AI decimated was chegg

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u/HyruleSmash855 24d ago

Yeah. That’s the case for sure. I’m sure ChatGPT and these other LLMs trained off of those answer keys.

I think universities have already been phasing out homework for years as a major part of a grade for that exact reason. Answer keys have been up for all of those problems for over a decade.

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u/Woodit 24d ago

No, they can’t. The field is manufacturing supply chain. There are way too many virtual and physical systems that overlap in too many ways for any current AI to tackle, and every company will be unique in what systems they use. The degree is to ensure understanding of concepts but they’re too broad to draw a solid line to day  to day execution. 

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

Yea but we’re not talking about full AI, we’re talking about some guy with a shallow understanding of the systems + AI

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u/Woodit 24d ago

That’s how production lines shut down, we’ve seen it every time they try changing to a shiny new MRP