The students submitted essays containing phrases such as "Madagascar purple bicycle whispers to the ceiling"
Facepalm: Modern problems require modern solutions – according to the meme. In this case, the issue is students using AI to cheat on assignments. The solution, used to great effect by one professor, was to hide a white-colored font in the assignment prompt telling the AI to talk nonsense about an unrelated subject.
Facepalm: The endemic scale of AI-assisted cheating among students over the past few years is well documented, but few visual representations illustrate the problem as well as a recent chart from a Brown University professor. As concerning as the graph is, the university's muted response to it is potentially even more worrying.
The big picture: Researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick in the United Kingdom estimate that roughly 80 websites selling cheats for online video games generate between $12 million and $73 million annually. Although some cheats can bypass robust (and often unpopular) anti-cheating software, these tend to be more expensive.
A hot potato: Recent reports suggest that students' use of generative AI to cheat on school assignments is approaching endemic levels. While many worry that tools like ChatGPT erode young people's critical thinking skills, some students have also caught teachers using the same tools, often with unsatisfactory results.