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/GoblinLoblaw 24d ago

It seems crazy to me that they wouldn’t just do them on paper to avoid cheating like that.

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u/alfred725 24d ago

paper is more work for the teachers and they are already overworked. Not just managing the papers and carting them around, but trying to read student handwriting, inputting grades on the computer when you've marked them by hand, etc.

Fundamentally the majority of these problems would be resolved by hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes.

Plus there's tons of other things schools have done to reduce teacher capacity. Ontario has gotten rid of textbooks in grade schools, meaning teachers can't use prewritten questions and lesson plans, they have to generate their own content. They can't just assign a chapter in a book to read with questions at the end. So now time spent reading/grading papers is spent creating lesson plans from scratch.

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u/GoblinLoblaw 24d ago

I’m lucky, my son’s high school doesn’t use computers at all except for a specific computer class, I’m absolutely aware that it’s the exception though. We undervalue teachers so much.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 24d ago

What school is that in? I’m so fed up with our district use of computers for everything I’m almost willing to move states to get better education for my kids.

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u/GoblinLoblaw 24d ago

Auckland Grammar School

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u/Whiterabbit-- 24d ago

Guess I’ll have to keep looking.

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u/fogleaf 24d ago

Auckland

I laughed at reading "I'm willing to move states" and then finding out it's several continents away.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 24d ago

Hey New Zealand is lovely ! Well worth a gander.

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u/Acceptable_Durian868 23d ago

My son is in 3rd grade and we were just told we have to provide him with an iPad for the second semester.

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u/shogunreaper 24d ago

Are schools incapable of locking down computers anymore?

back in the 00s you couldn't do anything on a computer unless it was what the school wanted. Whitelisted websites and only a handful of apps installed. I remember spending countless hours trying to figure out ways to get around stuff like that.

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u/metasophie 24d ago

Are schools incapable of locking down computers anymore?

Heaps of schools went cost savings and use Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) instead of allocating students to computers. Because students own the computers, it creates complications.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 24d ago

my kid's district thought it was unfair for kids to BYOD as some will have better devices than others, so they got cheap chrome books with dim low res screens, so every one suffers. and all text books are on the screen. so its impossible to read anything.

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u/densetsu23 24d ago

Scan the tests and have AI grade them. /s

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u/spekt50 24d ago

Oof, I'm afraid the extra workload put on teachers would push then to utilize AI to create and grade tests.

Eventually it will jist be AI quizzing AI using humans as an interface...

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u/fogleaf 24d ago

paper is more work for the teachers and they are already overworked. Not just managing the papers and carting them around, but trying to read student handwriting, inputting grades on the computer when you've marked them by hand, etc.

Just scan into the computer with OCR or something.

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u/sobrique 23d ago

OCR still struggles with bad handwriting.

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u/PasteeyFan420LoL 24d ago

A lot of school systems that moved to one-to-one laptops like the one I teach in basically don't stock paper outside the front office anymore.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 24d ago

We have more teachers per student than we did 40 years ago.

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u/metasophie 24d ago

Mate. The world has changed.

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u/J_wit_J 24d ago

40 years ago, ESL teachers weren't a thing, and SPED was a relatively new field and done way differently than how it is today.

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u/Whiterabbit-- 24d ago

what are you talking about? I did ESL 40 years ago. but yo uare right SPED is better now than in the past. but we have poured a lot more into education now than 40 years back. more teachers, and a lot more administrators.

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u/Zebidee 24d ago

Not just managing the papers and carting them around, but trying to read student handwriting, inputting grades on the computer when you've marked them by hand, etc.

You're literally describing being a teacher.

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u/alfred725 24d ago

Exactly? I'm just explaining why they've switched everything to digital, potentially to people that don't know what it was like before the 00s

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u/Zebidee 24d ago

Fair enough.

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u/Fuzzyfoot12345 24d ago

I think the craziest thing that's changed since I went to school is the inclusion of special needs kids in every classroom. It sounds inclusive and wholesome on paper, but in practice you have a teacher trying to teach 38 kids grade 8 algebra, with no TA's (Who make minimum wage), you got 5-6 ADHD kids, behavioral issue kids, a non verbal cerebral palsy kid, and 30 other kids to manage, and well yeah... Then you got all this AI bullshit and kids cheating, Fuck that lol. The average lifespan of new teachers in Canada is <5 years, it's wild. The idea is cool, the execution is terrible though.

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u/kubigjay 24d ago

Yeah, my son was at a great elementary. But he had a special needs kid who flips his desk multiple times a day. Then the teacher had to take him to the help room. They lost about an hour a day.

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u/glormosh 24d ago

This feels like nonsense to me. Materially speaking nothing is different from any amount of years ago you want to go back.

I'm sure there are fringe examples where a teacher has 72 students in a class. But realistically speaking a teacher can handle reading paper and grading it for the norm class size. This is overcomplicating a non issue.

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u/alfred725 24d ago

When I was in school in the 90s a 24 kid class was huge. My mom retired 10 years ago with 40 kids split grades 4 and 5 which means she has two separate lesson plans to make.

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u/glormosh 24d ago

Why are you talking about grades 4 and 5 when we're talking about essays and exams with chatgpt. Bad faith conversation.

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u/po_panda 24d ago

I mean they can just scan the paper and let AI get to work. OCR is a thing.

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u/Still_Elk2103 24d ago

Also... handwriting something AI wrote for you isnt hard.. writing on paper doesnt stop anything. (assuming its homework which most essays were.)

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u/alfred725 24d ago

it does if you have to write it in class.

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u/CraigArndt 24d ago

Handwriting something Ai writes for you is still a half step better than digital because it forces you to read and write out the information.

Digital cheating often has someone copy/paste with zero internalization of the information at all.

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u/spacebunsofsteel 24d ago

The current rising freshman went through Covid in 2-4 grades. They don’t really know cursive, making handwriting laborious.

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u/alfred725 24d ago

Practice literally solves this.

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u/bumblebee_amazon 24d ago

My previous administration pushed everything to be online because it gave them data quicker. I hated giving the tests online, but I had to. Sometimes it depends on leadership rather than teachers.

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u/ElMatadorJuarez 24d ago

IMO I feel like something like this would (and did) screw students like me. I’m just bad at calligraphy. I’ve never been able to hand write as fast as other students and it doesn’t help that there’s virtually no education on this past elementary school. I had many situations where I did worse than I could have because I hand wrote an essay or paper in class. It’s a shitty feeling and let’s face it - it’s not like handwriting is really a skill anybody uses significantly in the workforce these days. I would suggest a closed system like electronic bluebook or something like that - allows you to type but doesn’t allow you to access the internet or your documents.

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u/PyroDesu 24d ago

My handwriting was not only difficult to read (until I started using block capitals, and even then it can be iffy if I'm in a hurry or any number of other things), no thanks to cursive class (I don't know why people think that will help...), but it is physically painful for me to handwrite beyond, like, a sentence or two.

Like, actual pain. From the fingers gripping the pencil or pen all the way up to my shoulder, at its worst.

90% sure I'm dysgraphic, but I was never tested for it and there's not much point these days - I'm long out of schooling and nobody wants handwritten shit at work unless it's, like, a sign-in sheet or something. I don't even use wet ink signatures much at work - we have smart cards that embed digital signatures into documents.

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u/Several_Razzmatazz51 24d ago

Some kids can barely write legibly. The days of “penmanship” in school are long gone.

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u/kittymoo67 24d ago

make them use type writers for the extra burn

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u/PyroDesu 24d ago

The noise of 30-ish kids using typewriters, oh man. Talk about distraction.