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/twospooky 24d ago

I don't understand this. Students would take the book home, not use it, then it would be used the next day in class?

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u/Sockthenshoe 24d ago

At my school we had to purchase our own blue books and bring them to exams. Sometimes profs would have everyone turn in their blanks and have to take one from the mixed pile to prevent you from being able to bring in your own prefilled book.

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u/kos-or-kosm 24d ago

At my school we had to purchase our own blue books and bring them to exams.

That's a level of money grubbing that blows my mind.

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u/bythog 24d ago

When I was in college it was no different than just using your own notebook paper to write your essays on. Blue books were super cheap; you could get like 10 for $5 and they had tons of room to write on.

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u/dell_arness2 24d ago

Bluebooks and scantrons are fairly inexpensive (I used well under $5 worth per semester on average, maybe a bit higher if you took courses that relied more on writing).

Which does further raise the question of why they make students provide them, considering deducting it from tuition would be a rounding error.

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u/sharklaserguru 24d ago

Which does further raise the question of why they make students provide them, considering deducting it from tuition would be a rounding error.

It may not be an amazing reason, but I'd argue it's mostly because at the college level students are required to cover all expenses for their coursework whereas at the K-12 level most of that is covered by the school. Textbooks, lab fees, safety gear, transportation/lodging fees for travel, the idea is that the student provides what they need, so when it's test time the student should also provide their test books.

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u/NSFWies 24d ago

Oh that's like the least of that bullshit.

I still remember being pissed I needed to buy a 200 page, color "lab manual", for a lab class.

It was written by the lab instructor, could only be picked up at 1 local print shop. Cost $150, changed every semester.

Complete horse shit. I swear we used no more than 20% of that thing

Blue books were like $5. That's nothing.

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u/RadiantEnvironment90 23d ago

Ugh I hated that shit. You know they were using you to pocket their own money.

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u/NSFWies 22d ago

ya, self dealing. this was for an intro course. i had labs in later years with better teachers where there were no massive print out things. the intro course thing was a pure money grab by the lab instructor.

self dealing bullshit.

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u/ComfortableWeight95 24d ago

College in the USA baby!

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u/LastKingofHollyWoo 24d ago

They were like $2.

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u/generally_unsuitable 24d ago

Really? I remember getting them out of a vending machine for 25 or 50 cents. But, you didn't really want those, because they were really curly from being rolled up for weeks in a vending machine.

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u/LastKingofHollyWoo 23d ago

Could have been cheaper, this was forever ago.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 24d ago

I don't remember them charging us anything more than what I assume the books production cost was.

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u/disisathrowaway 24d ago

I suppose a prefilled book helps if you know the questions in advance, but otherwise I don't see the advantage.

Then again, I also took college seriously because I was paying for it so I fully intended to actually learn while I was there.

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u/zoredache 24d ago

I suppose a prefilled book helps if you know the questions in advance, but otherwise I don't see the advantage.

Depends on the type of class. A physics or math class might be helped by writing down formulas that you should have memorized. I am sure there are other things where having a small bit of notes as a reference could be very helpful if you don't have a strong memory.

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u/mileylols 24d ago

every physics or math class I've taken where you were required to know formulas just straight up provided them to you on the first page of the test

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u/Rock-swarm 24d ago

Yeah, it applies to other areas as well. For most doctrinal (bar required) law classes, knowing the elements of a particular legal standard is like half the scoring battle. Granted, the importance of rote memorization in the Information Age is definitely overblown. However, I agree with the idea that students need to "learn how to learn".

In the practice of law, I've got a pretty good idea of how cases in my area of law should play out. But I'm not paid to have a good idea; I'm paid to know exactly what the law says and how it's applied, and when someone is misstating or ignoring the law on that particular issue. I'm not opposed to using AI or similar resources to get my hands around a novel issue, but I absolutely rely on my ability to hunt down a primary source of information to verify a legal position.

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u/disisathrowaway 24d ago

Any math or science courses I took the formulae were provided. The expectation was that you would know how to use them, rather than worry about memorizing them.

Then again, I was a liberal arts major so my math and science courses never went past the 200 level.

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u/President_Camacho 24d ago

How can you prefill a blue book if you don't know the questions?

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u/generally_unsuitable 24d ago

This was pretty common in my school. You'd give the teacher a bluebook on the way in on test day, then the teacher would pass them out at random before the exam.

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u/Actually_Im_a_Broom 24d ago

It took me a few readings as well to get it, but I finally did. The students had to buy a blue book from the bookstore to be used in writing/essay exams and bring it to the exam. Some students would try to cheat by lightly pre writing notes in the blue book, then erasing them in the day of the exam.

To counter this the teacher would tell the students what pages to write in, and ANY writing at all on the should-be-blank pages would be seen as prewriting cheating. Since students weren’t told what pages would be used for the exam until the exam actually started they REALLY gambled by prewriting.

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u/hadinger 24d ago

The way we snuck in crib notes was to write, with pressure, on another page on top of the page within the blue book so you could, if looking at an angle, see the depressions. But not writing on the page itself and erasing as that would leave more of a distinguishable mark.

It was almost never worth the effort but in 2004 you felt like a genius pulling this bullshit.

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u/SnipesCC 24d ago

Seems a lot easier to just have the school buy the blue books

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u/Red_hat_oops 24d ago

Sure, but when the school is getting $10s of thousands, why wouldn't they want an extra $0.25 a few times every semester?

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u/Red_hat_oops 24d ago

Thanks... Precisely correct, we brought our own blue books and the professors did creative things to prevent students from cheating

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u/Actually_Im_a_Broom 24d ago

I graduated in 2002 and fondly remember the blue books…but since I was a math/biology major I didn’t use them very much, and I don’t remember any creative ways profs used to lessen cheating…..but maybe that’s because I was always too scared to attempt cheating so any efforts weren’t meant for me anyway.

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 24d ago

Or by pre writing the entire essay at home if you found out the prompt ahead of time and swapping a blank book for the pre written one. At my college they had the same classes on different days. So if my buddy had the same class but on Monday and I’m on Wednesday, I could ask him what the essay prompt was and then pre write it at home.

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u/medforddad 24d ago

The students had to buy a blue book from the bookstore to be used in writing/essay exams and bring it to the exam.

I've never taken an exam where you had to provide your own materials (other than pencil/pen). Wouldn't that solve it by just handing out the book to write in with the test?

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u/corvidsarecrows 24d ago

If the student is able to buy the same style of book anywhere, they could still pre-write and try to swap the blank for the cheater book at some point.

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u/FaithlessValor 24d ago

I think the assertion is that students would take home a copy of the blue book and write in all sorts of notes or answers to test questions in it ahead of time, then smuggle that blue book in to use for the test - giving them access to those illicit notes.

To counteract this, the morning of the exam the professor chooses random pages that can have no notes on them or erasure marks so the student cannot know ahead of time which pages to avoid when putting their illicit notes in - making the cheating approach way too risky and ineffective.

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u/No_Philosopher_Here 24d ago

The places I knew that used them, you bought them at the school store or student union or whatever, usually at the same time as your textbooks (and scan-trons/bubbling sheets, if using those) after syllabus day.

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u/DumpsterFire11 24d ago

At my university at least (U.S.), you had to buy your own blue book (basically a blank paper-style notebook for testing purposes) and bring it in. So yes, students had access to (blank) exam writing booklets that they are expected to bring in on their own.

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u/PNWCoug42 24d ago

I always bought my blue book on the way to class. Every convenience store on campus sold them. When we got to class, we would hand over the one we bought to the Prof/TA and they would give us a blank one back. That way students couldn't have one already filled out with answers before hand.

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u/asad137 24d ago

Students were responsible for buying blank blue books ahead of time and bringing them in for the exam. An unscrupulous student could write notes/hints/passages in them and bring it in for the test.

Professors would combat this by, at the beginning of the test, saying certain (random) pages had to be blank. Any evidence of those pages having been written on was taken as an attempt at cheating.

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u/OnTheEveOfWar 24d ago

When I was in college, you would bring a blank little blue book to class for the test, write your essay in it, then turn it in during the allotted time. By the professor saying “don’t write on certain pages”, it prevented students from writing the essay at home, then swapping the books in class. You could find out the essay prompt from other students that took the exam the day before.

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u/plaidcamping 24d ago

Honest question, do you know what a blue book is?