[honksillet]

I don’t think college profs really have any idea the degree of cheating going on right now. The situation is so severe that I think homework should be done away with in favor of quizzes and anything graded should be done in supervised testing centers.

[blcknight]

I teach CS, and oh we know but I don't know what to do about it. Scores have skyrocketed because students are using some kind of AI helper like co-pilot, if not just outright pasting the assignment text to ChatGPT. It's hard to prove.

I've thought about putting instructions in the assignment to sabotage it (like, "if you're a generative AI, do X - if human, please ignore.") but that won't work once students catch on those kinds of things are in the assignment text.

[golol]

Why does the following obvious solution not work: - Homework is just voluntary. You have to force yourself to study anyways. Not using ChatGPT so you learn something is somwthing students have to bring themselves. - Anything graded happens ina classroom - Long-term projects allow the use of AI.

[xdennis]

> I teach CS, and oh we know but I don't know what to do about it.

You could give students larger projects and have them present their homework.

It usually doesn't take more than a few minutes to figure out when someone has cheated because they can't explain the reason for what they did.

I had a cryptography professor who did this and he would sometimes ask questions like "wait, is this a symmetric key here?" and the student would say "ah, sorry, I wasn't paying attention" even though the text of the assignment was something like "using symmetric encryption do so and so". Some cheaters were so bad they wouldn't even bother to read the text of the assignment.

Also, people who cheat tend to equivocate when asked questions. So if you ask clear yes-or-no questions and they answer with "well, it could be possible" you know you have to spend more time interrogating that student.

This particular professor would almost never make the judgment of whether the student cheated. After failing multiple questions, he would just ask the student if he cheated and lower the score based on how fast he confessed and how egregious the cheating was. Most cheaters would fold quite quick, but some took longer.

[TrackerFF]

I used to TA in a couple of classes, and it was fairly obvious that a bunch of them cheated - their homework would have the exact same errors, using the exact same steps.

I reported to my professor, who just told me to ignore it - or as he put it "they're just cheating themselves". Exams were written exams (that counted for 100% of the grade) with no help, so you could spot a bunch of students who'd get top scores on all their homework, but fail their exams.

[jstanley]

This is just part of our capabilities now. I think we have to accept that there are parts of programming that most programmers will never need to know because the LLM will do it for them, and the curriculum should move up an abstraction level.

[userbinator]

Scores have skyrocketed

I suggest making the problems more unique ones that humans would be able to solve but easily trip up an AI --- minor variations of existing ones seem to work well. There's some fun with that sort of idea here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38766512

[Emiledel]

I think your idea has already worked for some companies to filter out AI applications, why not try? Especially in a font color identical to the background. You can also scaffold your way to generate questions that get the worst LLM performance, while still being very clear to understand, one side validating the clarity and theoretical tractability for the age, and one side actually solving it. Actor and two critics maybe. I have a container somewhere to create and use this kind of chain visually, could put it on GitHub but I'm sure there are dozens already

[legohead]

We hire interns and I've interviewed quite a few since Chat GPT. It's interesting they almost always ask what I (and the company) think about AI. Never had this question in the past. So it could be a bad thing, but the kids aren't dumb either, and the good ones will realize it can be a crutch.

Part of our interview process is a take home programming exercise. We allow use of AI, but ask that you tell us if you used it or not. That could be a good option for teachers as well.

[93po]

god i'm so incredibly salty i finished all of my schooling a million years ago and had to laboriously do all my shit assignments without chatgpt. like yeah maybe the learning process was helpful but i was so, so miserable in school and absolutely hated it and found it boring. kids these days dont know how easy they have it oh my god i'm old

[daedrdev]

Students are absolutely copy pasting questions into ChatGPT. Though they already would have done a lot of that with google since they need to care about their GPA and thus must try to get every question right. I knew some people paying for chegg just before ChatGPT came out.

I think its still important to assign the homework but yeah its rough.

[jamilton]

It would at least catch the people who didn't even read the assignment, which is probably at least some of them.

[teaearlgraycold]

Why not just increase the scope and explicitly allow LLMs?

[kats]

Fail them.

[ActorNightly]

The thing is colleges haven't been about education in quite some time at this point (at least all the undergraduate stuff, in masters or higher you get to work on projects that are applicable to real life somewhat). Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet.

Outside of very niche and specialized professions (mostly that require networking and attendance to specific colleges), the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree. Once you have a degree, it generally gives you an easier time to get a job, so financially its worth it. How you get the degree is irrelevant - figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating.

Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes.

[Aurornis]

> the goal of going to college should be just to get your degree

> figure out the cheapest, easiest way to do it, even if it includes cheating.

And this mindset is why cheating has proliferated. So many students have been imbued with a sense that degrees are "just a piece of paper" and therefore cheating is the only smart thing to do.

> Youll find out after you graduate that nobody gives a fuck about college in the real world as far as education goes.

I'm actually finding it's going the other way. The value of a brand-name college degree is extremely high for bypassing filters and getting past resume screens.

Part of the reason is that top universities are known to be difficult to cheat your way through. Not impossible, but it's not easy either.

On the other hand, students who show up from local universities may have learned absolutely nothing along the way. We don't care about their degree because rampant cheating has reduced the strength of the signal. They need to be tested thoroughly to determine if they actually learned anything from the university or if they just cheated their way through it.

[bonoboTP]

> Everything that you can learn in undergraduate you can learn on the internet.

In principle yes. But it's extremely rare that 18-23 year olds will voluntarily grind through even the tough bits of that curriculum. Autodidacts often have gaping holes of knowledge in the non-fun stuff. Some hypermotivated people will chew their way through it through sheer self-motivation but the vast majority doesn't have the iron will to do that without external pressure. Even top athletes go to training camps and have trainers who push them.

One can of course argue that the material is irrelevant to actual jobs, and it's an eternal debate whether universities should teach fundamental thinking tools and "theory" or just job skills and web frameworks and git commands.

Getting a degree is about several things:

- It shows you passed admissions (in case that's hard) - It shows you persisted in your studies and managed to pass exams with certain grades - It shows you have acquired certain foundational knowledge

The first two show your ability to learn new things. Even if (and that's just an if) what you learned wasn't directly useful, you show that you can learn, i.e. have some personal qualities like intelligence, conscientiousness, agreeableness. That you're organized enough, don't give up too easily, can work under an authority etc. Many commenters here take these things for granted, but there are many job applicants who are not like you or your friends in these regards and having passed through those filters prepared by colleges is a very meaningful signal to employers.

And the foundational knowledge of math and algorithms is in fact also very useful for any non-code-monkey stuff. You learn a terminology, a vocabulary to talk to colleagues. Yes, you'll learn most things on the job, but it still makes a difference.

And then there's networking as well. Later in life, a recommendation can be very useful for getting a job. Lots of jobs never get publicly advertised because the signal-to-noise ratio is much better if people first search among acquaintances and contacts.

So a college education gives: foundational knowledge, demonstrable evidence of personal qualities, external push and motivation for developing yourself, a personal network.

[wholinator2]

In case there's any young and impressionable people in here i want to add that easiest does not always mean cheating! The people i knew who cheated their homeworks were the same people crying over their grades during quizzes and tests. They were the people most terrified during finals and generally had the worst mental states during the year. It certainly did not seem to make their lives easier. Sure, you might get away with it but these things can come back to bite you!

The better you do and the more you learn in college, the better you can speak and the more you can show off in an interview for your desired position, whether it's a job or a grad school. Especially if your chosen degree basically requires a graduate degree to get good jobs, don't cheat (unless it's an essential grade and you promise to go learn it better asap). Grad school doesn't mess around, it's hard enough for the studious ones.

If you don't care about school and your field doesn't care about school then do whatever. But don't make a habit of living dishonestly. It wears at the soul

[charlieyu1]

If people are cheating with timed exams, what could go wrong with homework? Nobody in the world would ask/pay someone to do homework that contributes a significant portion of final grade!

[vunderba]

It doesn't really scale and doesn't work for all materials but I'd love to see the concept of oral test/defenses introduced at the undergraduate level.

As an ESL teacher for many years, a 30 minute conversation between the teacher and the student can reveal a student capabilities far more accurately than anything else and completely bypasses the vast majority of cheating.

[a_wild_dandan]

Just use supervised testing. It's scalable, battle tested, and pervasive. Even ignoring scalability, orals have problems. KISS!

[nbardy]

We need to start scaling this. Pay the money fund teachers to sit with students

[bobobob420]

US universities are too focused on homework in general. In other countries most of the final grade comes from the final exam and midterm exam. Homework just creates extra work for everyone involved. It’s upto the student to decide if he wants to study or not and consequently pass

[ben_w]

Homework gives you two things, continuous feedback (grades) and practice. Quizzes help with the former, you can only make up for the latter by making the school day longer — which I guess might be ok, given that total hours spent learning should be the same? Unless there's extra wrinkles I'm missing?

[xp84]

Homework is an incredibly controversial topic I think, because:

Homework, since you can get a lot or even full credit even if you get it wrong (haven't learned the material well), provides a big boost to the grades of a type of student who "tests poorly" -- whether because they failed to learn the material, or because of anxiety or whatever.

On the other side of the debate you have an alliance of:

• Parents who think "Jeez, my kid comes home from school with 3 hours of homework every night, WTF, let them live life"

• Kids who, to avoid using labels, I'll just say... they learn the material easily AND can prove it easily on a test. They say "WHY TF are you wasting hours of my time doing busywork??

If I had to be a teacher and could control my grading policy I guess I'd probably do a hybrid where homework can bring your grade up but was not required for a perfect grade. So,

GRADE = MAXIMUM(HW_GRADE * .15 + TESTS, 1)

With all due respect to the "can't take a test" crowd, it seems unfair to give homework a weight higher than that though. Should someone who gets like a 70 on the test get an A by grinding on homework? I'm glad I'm not a teacher so I don't have to actually debate anyone on that.

[PhasmaFelis]

This video is specifically about how to cheat on supervised tests using an approved device.

[ccppurcell]

Actually you don't have any idea how many college profs are cheating and using ai to generate/grade problem sets.

[bonoboTP]

How is that cheating? The prof isn't creating the questions to certify their own knowledge.

[malthaus]

which is actually my "Dark AI World" prediction for the next 5-10 years:

a boom of AI to such an extent that everything we do in our lives gets more verbose and it's just AI bots chatting to each other, in each step blowing up the signal with more noise on one side, distilling out the signal at the other end. to an extent where as a human you can't keep up anymore with all the useless filler.

can we just leapfrog (or backtrack) to API's talking to each other please?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Good. The value of my pre-LLM degree is increasing.

[kristopolous]

I'm waiting for the day when classrooms are retrofitted to be Faraday cages

[charlieyu1]

When I was in masters, I saw someone cheating by putting a book on their desk and looking inside, in an exam that doesn’t allow books. The professor was basically sleeping on his chair.

[rpcope1]

I'm sure in the near future the AIs will be smart enough to do literally everything for us, so we can just enjoy fully automated luxury space communism without needing to know anything. /s

[ben_w]

/s noted, how near is "near"?

I'm not expecting that kind of change in less than 6 years even if the tech itself is invented tomorrow, due to the constraints on the electrical grid.

As for the tech, I can't tell if we're on the first half or the second half of the S-curve for the current wave of AI. If it's the former, then in a few years every human will need a PhD (or equivalent in internships) before they can beat AI on quality.