this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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Clever, clever (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 106 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I think most students are copying/pasting instructions to GPT, not uploading documents.

[–] [email protected] 152 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Right, but the whitespace between instructions wasn't whitespace at all but white text on white background instructions to poison the copy-paste.

Also the people who are using chatGPT to write the whole paper are probably not double-checking the pasted prompt. Some will, sure, but this isnt supposed to find all of them its supposed to catch some with a basically-0% false positive rate.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah knocking out 99% of cheaters honestly is a pretty good strategy.

And for students, if you're reading through the prompt that carefully to see if it was poisoned, why not just put that same effort into actually doing the assignment?

[–] [email protected] 90 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, so forgive me, but I expect carefully reading the prompt is still orders of magnitude less effort than actually writing a paper?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Eh, putting more than minimal effort into cheating seems to defeat the point to me. Even if it takes 10x less time, you wasted 1x or that to get one passing grade, for one assignment that you'll probably need for a test later anyway. Just spend the time and so the assignment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

If you're a cheater, it all makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Disagree. I coded up a matrix inverter that provided a step-by-step solution, so I don't have to invert them myself by hand. It was considerably more effort than the mind-boggling task of doing the assignment itself. Additionally, at least half of the satisfaction came from the simple fact of sticking it to the damn system.

My brain ain't doing any of your dumb assignments, but neither am I getting a less than an A. Ha.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Lol if this was a programming assignment, then I can 100% say that you are setting yourself up for failure, but hey you do you. I'm 15 years out of college right now, and I'm currently interviewing for software gigs. Programs like those homework assignments are your interviews, hate to tell you, but you'll be expected to recall those algorithms, from memory, without assistance, live, and put it on paper/whiteboard within 60 minutes - and then defend that you got it right. (And no, ChatGPT isn't allowed. Oh sure you can use it at work, I do it all the time, but not in your interviews)

But hey, you got it all figured out, so I'm sure not learning the material now won't hurt you later and interviewers won't catch on. I mean, I've said no to people who I caught cheating in my interviews, but I'm sure it won't happen to you.

For reference, literally just this week one of my questions was to first build an adjacency matrix and then come up with a solution for finding all of the disjointed groups within that matrix and then returning those in a sorted list from largest to smallest. I had 60 minutes to do it and I was graded on how much I completed, if it compiled, edge cases, run time, and space required. (again, you do not get ChatGPT, most of the time you don't get a full IDE - if you're lucky you get Intellisense or syntax highlighting. Sometimes it may be you alone writing on a whiteboard)

Of course that's just one interview, that's just the tech screen. Most companies will then move you onto a loop (or what everyone lovingly calls 'the Guantlet') which is 4 1 hour interviews in a single day, all exactly like that.

And just so you know, I was a C student, I was terrible in academia - but literally no one checks after school. They don't need to, you'll be proving it in your interviews. But hey, what do I know, I'm just some guy on the internet. Have fun with your As. (And btw, as for sticking it to the system, you are paying them for an education - of which you aren't even getting. So, who's screwing the system really?)

(If other devs are here, I just created a new post here: https://lemmy.world/post/21307394. I'd love to hear your horror stories too, as in sure our student here would love to read them)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

if this is how you interview, your company sux.

Your fellow tech bro with a big fat tech job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

This in reply to a person who took more effort to write a program that wrote out the steps for inverting a matrix so they didn't have to do the busy work of inverting a silly number of them? Kinda sounds like they prefer really understanding and challenging work to busy work is all.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Or if they don't bother to read the instructions they uploaded

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago

Just put it in the middle and I bet 90% of then would miss it anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It just takes one person to notice (or see a tweet like this) and tell everybody else that the teacher is setting a trap.

Once the word goes out about this kind of thing, everybody will be double checking the prompt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I doubt it.

For the same reasons, really. People who already intend to thoroughly go over the input and output to use AI as a tool to help them write a paper would always have had a chance to spot this. People who are in a rush or don't care about the assignment, it's easier to overlook.

Also, given the plagiarism punishments out there that also apply to AI, knowing there's traps at all is a deterrent. Plenty of people would rather get a 0 rather than get expelled in the worst case.

If this went viral enough that it could be considered common knowledge, it would reduce the effectiveness of the trap a bit, sure, but most of these techniques are talked about intentionally, anyway. A teacher would much rather scare would-be cheaters into honesty than get their students expelled for some petty thing. Less paperwork, even if they truly didn't care about the students.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

yes but copy paste includes the hidden part if it’s placed in a strategic location

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then it will catch people that don't proofread the copy/pasted prompt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

No, because they think nothing of a request to cite Frankie Hawkes. Without doing a search themselves, the name is innocuous enough as to be credible. Given such a request, an LLM, even if it has some actual citation capability, currently will fabricate a reasonable sounding citation to meet the requirement rather than 'understanding' it can't just make stuff up.