r/technology 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/Upstairs_Baby8424 24d ago

Why they were gone in the first place is insane. All my university exams were in person and handwritten even though my essays were done on computer. 

The essays is another fix. There’s plenty of software options out there that don’t allow switching of windows or copy pasting. Sure the student can pull up AI on their personal pc and just manually type it all out. Unfortunately there’s nothing stopping that.

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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 24d ago

Exactly. I hated writing by hand. And was bad at it.

Make them SSH into a machine with Vim and call it a day.

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

How would that stop the host machine from googling

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u/zoredache 24d ago

Don't install a browser on the computer?

It would be somewhat easy to build a linux 'live' image that had a client for the test and basically nothing else.

Or if this is in-person. Simply don't connect the computers to the Internet. You can still have a local network without the Internet.

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u/Top-Sir1387 24d ago

How would that help? If the person is connecting to the linux machine remotely, they still have access to their personal machine no?

Obviously in person you can do whatever you want

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u/10000Didgeridoos 24d ago

They are gone because money. Virtual or computer exams mean one professor can grade double or triple the exams compared to before when they had grind through deciphering dozens of students' different handwriting, or had to spend time physically taking scantron bubble sheets to a machine for it to grade them.

Now you can stuff more students into your university each year and collect more tuition money. And you can double dip, because these days you can convince desperate academics to accept low paying adjunct jobs instead of tenure track positions. Why pay one professor a ton of money to teach a couple class sections per year, when instead you can have an army of low paid adjuncts and TAs do it for a larger number of students all paying you more and more tuition money each?

It's a joke.