IliveIdyeIliveagain
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Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University, hid a white-font prompt inside his midterm instructions that students couldn’t see, but AI chatbots could. The hidden text instructed AI to insert random sentences about Madagascar into any generated answer.
According to Gibson, 32 of 35 students submitted exams containing those unrelated phrases, despite the test being about the Industrial Revolution. Some responses even included bizarre lines like, “Madagascar floats sideways through the afternoon,” strongly suggesting the students had copied the exam instructions into an AI chatbot and submitted the output without reviewing it.
Gibson said the goal was not to embarrass students. Instead, he wanted to demonstrate how AI-generated work can often be identified and to encourage a broader discussion about maintaining academic integrity as AI becomes increasingly common in education.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DbS-FtSiCbx/
MsBehavinMaven
His argument is pretty much invalidated by wearing the meta perv glasses
mrmillar
Sounds like rage bait from here
BigBlueWonder
StellarJay77
So 3 students caught the white text before prompting AI or you know, actually read what it had written before submitting it.
Snooj
Last class I took involved a group project making slides and then presenting it in front of the class. Two of the members of my project were unable to read their own slides. It was fucking awful.
JayEnfield
But an important lesson about how incompetent your coworkers are going to be for the rest of your life.
lonelyrangerofthedreams
The 3 passed just because find out the white text probably
TLoATDaE
Modern problems require modern solutions.
TheNextFreud
Get rid of grades and let students learn for the same of learning
Yakeshinu
You can still do that. It's called "auditing" the course, and it's usually quite a bit cheaper. The credit hours don't apply towards the degree, though, but you can take interesting/difficult/not in your field courses without worrying about them affecting your GPA.
Centroid
And now the kids will adapt and copy all, change font color/size, and delete the prompt.
sfrinlan
At least they actually read through the question, then! That would be an improvement over this.
tamanostre
That's what my friend who's a teacher does. She calls it a bomb.
dghughes
I know a professor and they have been fighting cheating fornyears but the Internet is a whole new game. Even 15 years ago they said students were obviously using entire pages from the Internet bought from sites selling exam answers or essays. I went back to scgool 10 years ago a d was shocked at the crap available. Members of my own group entire papers bought and submiyted. One guy forgot to change the name on a paper to his own and was caught.
johnvilnis
So how long until some idiot student tries to sue a professor who does this?
badkluster04
That image is also AI, and that way of presenting news? Also ai farming clicks
backrideup9
Wonderful. AI bros are building another entire generation even dumber and less competent than they are. I already work with some of them, it is nothing short of frustrating to know they make double what I do.
upvotinganimal
That's the whole point, they want people stupider to be easier to control and they want the general to have to pay these AI companies for critical thinking once they diminish the general populations ability to do so with their addictive and over reliance on AI. It's a new cancer to society.
januarylover
I feel like I'm a withered old man chewing a toothpick & polishing a rifle on a rocking chair in my yard when I say 'these days, the system's producing adults that don't even know how to think'.
GerbilHereReportingLiveFromRichardGeresAss
you shouldn't because that's what the system produces, by design. They know what they're doing serving those kids slop and making them think they're smart because they told some machine to think for them.
MoopsyLD
Oh fucking hell gross. Anyone else notice he has the pervert meta glasses (seen better on the actual image /gallery/fUJAwZr/comment/2507781303
SternLecturePlumbing
I feel like I get graded harshly because my writing doesn’t compare with the ChatGPT writings that contain 10 sided sources instead of the necessary one. I even brought it up with my friends. They all thought I was crazy for not using the AI to get a better grade.
FreshFeeling
As a professor who has done this for a while: most of the mainstream AI chatbots (at least ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) will now tell the student if there are any contradictory directions, potential traps or other oddities. (Grok and Meta don’t.)
IliveIdyeIliveagain
Students, (Thanks for the comment Professor)
ProfessorHerpDerp
I mean, having to do it with pen and paper would also hinder AI. Or a scantron sheet (I asked a relative recently and they didn't know about scantrons. Which I guess is both good and bad.)
921crash
3 students proof-read the AI response.
xeoxion
They got bananaed
BlueSimian
This whole article is Madagascar.
graehall
techbros just destroying human knowledge and the environment and jobs - they need to be regulated into dust
Turboslacker
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1MHozMW0xN21nYjl0M2p4eWp0OHNjcWJmOHE1d2E2c2cweWhkMmtwNiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/cO39srN2EUIRaVqaVq/200w.webp
turbodog
Ctrl-A | shell | vi bullshit.txt | I | ctrl-V | :wq | open bullshit.txt
laDisparitionDesHeures
Got confused by no "copy".
Youareincorrectsir
Vi lmaaaao fuck that.
DarkZalgo
I had no choice but to learn vi, the embedded devices my company sells ONLY have vi on them.
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1M3ZpemQ2b3g0enBmeHk3a2c2cXQ2a2RrY3dvZXc5ejR1ZjhtY3U3bCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/nk8KVxWs4dIRy/200w.webp
turbodog
nano heathen!
FuckingTurtleBear
whatsit?
evilspock
Magic incantation to view the cut-and-pasted prompt in an editor that will show the formatting so that white-on-white text is obvious.
Thing is - students lazy enough to paste the prompt into AI and uncritically paste the results back without proofreading sure as hell aren't running linux.
Zero sympathy. Stupidity is supposed to be painful. Flunk them all for academic dishonesty, let them repeat the course.
Winterous
Don't just fail them, cane them.
IAmJacksViagraInducedErection
Ok boomer
HawkMavrickson
College prof here: Ive used the white print technique myself. But it runs into issues quickly. Students using alternative access to the file (ie using Dictate, or grayscale) will catch the prompt. Created a bunch of challenges for me last semester.
Am open to other tricks though!
IliveIdyeIliveagain
Students, (Thanks for the comment, professor)
HawkMavrickson
My newest assignment (client case study) will provide written instructions, but the actual case information will be provided by me over video acting as the client (how do you do fellow kids!?)
Mansoor68729
So, 3 students actually reviewed the AI response.
DukeDarkwood
That's only a little more likely as people doing the actual work, so I'd say one of those three is probably legit.
Probably.
cdspace
If you just put the final into AI mindlessly, sure this happens. If you select the text of each question, you'd immediately see the white text. This is about minimum effort, not about the students that are smart about using AI. Ai is a tool, not an answer.
Youareincorrectsir
Wait untill you hear about parseltongue and ascii smuggling. No copy paste are going to help you. Use ai as a Helping tool. Not a solver.
B3N15
From personal experience (at least at the Middle/High School level), the kids using AI aren't the kids who are going to check over the answer to make sure it didn't halucinate or go off on a tangent, they just want to get an answer with minimum work
sfrinlan
IMO, that's the more scary and disappointing part. I don't believe the students are allowed to use AI at all in this specific case, but at least if you're going to cheat, be a little smart on your cheating JFC
ChelVanin
Last time it was a sentence about Julius Caesar. You sure this story isn’t bullshit?
sfrinlan
https://www.tiktok.com/@iamjasongibson/video/7664639999479958797 I mean, he could be lying, but he did post about it
TomahawkJackson
Occam's Razor says "Teachers have communities where they discuss the use of AI in all of it's forms - students using it TO LEARN and also students using it TO AVOID LEARNING - and they pass ideas like this around amongst themselves. And they're already hot onto the next thing now that the Press has cracked this one wide open..."
SaltyAndBitter
32/35 is a crazy ratio, and we don't know if the remaining 3 also used AI but saw the shenanigans. Can't say the story is lying, but to say that nearly all of them used AI AND didn't even bother reading it over, is questionable. Then again, people are saying that the education system is in shambles, and kids are getting dumber. The reliance of AI is adding fuel to the fire.
archon325
Yeah, read this as 32/35 people don't value learning, and are willingly surrendering their mental skills and functions. And that's at a University! That's a world-ending problem.
People think AI is going to destroy everything like in Terminator, it's going to be more like WALL E.
HardyandRamanujan
I teach doctors and if you thought the problem was only for undergrad essays boy do I have some news
EMHPicardo
Submitting without reading.
CausticCake
Literal lawyers have gotten their hands slapped for filing AI-generated legal briefs with the courts. A court in PA is requiring an AI disclosure form with each filing now. Like how hard is it to just check what the AI is giving you?
nosadpandas
What’s the point of paying for college if you’re just going to cheat your way through it and learn nothing? Like, just skip the debt and stop wasting time if you’re not going to try.
IHateItH3r3
not if theyre illiterate
ROBOTvsMAN
How you think 3 students passed? Also I;m relevant!
growlingmeattank
Hi relevant I’m dad
MonkeyofDeath
Who's winning?
Yakeshinu
GanjalfTheClear
Right? Like goddamn, you're already being a lazy ass by having AI answer the questions on the test. The least you could do is read the answers and make sure they make sense.
Jackpot7777777
As someone that grew up with the rise of home computers, the importance of pasting everything into a Notepad document to strip away any weird formatting and then reading that shit before copying and pasting THAT where I need it is ingrained into me like Stranger Danger.
EMHPicardo
OneMoreLime
If they could read and comprehend what it wrote maybe they wouldn't need it to write the thing for them in the first place. I think this is very fair because regardless of who is possibly using ai tools to various different degrees this method is targeted to punish the worst offenders.
CardboardStomach
It's the same as all those obvious AI advertisements or business graphics. Someone too lazy to look up clip art for their business is definitely too lazy to review something AI generated. And someone using AI to get out of writing a paper/test they're potentially paying thousands of dollars in tuition to write is gonna be too lazy to proofread several pages of AI generated answers, especially if they wouldn't be able to recognize incorrect info anyway.
EMHPicardo
RainierAlt
Nah. If they got that far by avoiding doing real work, why start then?
Unfortunately, I think even before AI a lot of people saw school as just something you had to do, a stage of life to get through, especially since many white collar businesses do look to see if you graduated with a degree.
So AI makes them feel like they can coast through the milestones faster and still get their Standard Achievement, just like everyone else.
applesforjuice
Even at my school (ranked above MIT the year I graduated) frats would save exams and papers for the "brothers" to use. I was a TA and had about 130 students. For the lab write-ups students had to print out their code as an appendix and 60-70 had code that was commented "CHANGE THIS PART" they didn't even read the code that someone gave them. Collaboration was fine and simple algorithms will be identical often, but you didn't even look at it? Fuck you. Learn it or leave I helped anyone who asked
homemadechef
Listen, I wrote actual papers myself in college and submitted them without reading. It's what you do when you procrastinate.
MuseMatar
When I did the final presentation for my internship to graduate, I spent all night putting the slideshow together, then, without reviewing it, transitioned directly into giving the 45 minute presentation sans script, let alone practiced.
BenYourFriend
That information still came from you. Even if you hallucinated or bullshitted your way through it, a human mind still made the slop that landed on the plate. Helluva lot better than getting a robot to do your word vomit for you
EMHPicardo
hogeyegrex
I don’t need no stinkin AI to generate a bunch of gibberish for me. I can generate all the gibberish I need.
TheDoctorCrankenstein
You have at least read the paper once in the act of writing it, which is more than those who blindly submit an AI generated paper.
homemadechef
You know how I can tell you've never overdosed on caffeine?
TheDoctorCrankenstein
*laughs in AuADHD caffeine addiction* you'd be wrong in that assumption.
Anyways...
Just because you didn't fully process the information doesn't mean you didn't initially read that information.
chencking
They somehow also missed the extra white text when copy pasting. That invisible text trick is used for web crawlers. It shouldn't fool a human who has to highlight and copy paste it.
DancingSwine
Ctrl + a + never look at it again
rfur
Probably done as a PDF uploaded to whatever AI tool of choice… otherwise I’d also expect pasting copied text to remove the formatting as the chat input is unlikely to be true rich text. Then again, if you aren’t reading the output are you even reading the input?
You’d think people go study to learn not just to pass… not so!
hogeyegrex
I never gave a toss about grades or homework. I was happy to learn whatever they felt like throwing at me, and then some, but I drew the line at mechanically spouting it back to them on a daily basis. I’d ace every test. Let them judge me on that.
Needless to say, I went through a bunch of schools.
azazyel
I like to know that my papers would never be flagged as AI. I tended to go astray as I found out professors didn't really care that much as long as you showed an understanding of the subject. I got a 3.0 on one paper and got this comment "I don't know what this has to do with the topic assigned but you really put some thought into it" I wish I still had that paper.
zFUBARz
I once had a prof who loved my titles so much he spent like 15 minutes on them each time I handed a paper in, and would say they bumped my grade up. My friend who ended up graduating summa cum laude hated it. Could never peak his interest the same way. That only made me double down and get even more ostentatious with my titles. (The papers themselves were good too I'm sure.)
Winterous
Pique.
zFUBARz
Thank you, should have remembered that, but spent 3 hours on the road today.
cdspace
Was it a paper that was supposed to be about "The Emperor of Time", yet the paper as written was about "The Emperors New Groove"?
I can't tell which bot is copying the other anymore
Dekker3D
Apparently papers written by autistic people are more likely to be flagged as AI by those AI detectors, even when no AI was used. Fun fact. Well, fun-ish. Less fun if you're autistic :P
YepItsCancer
Yup, and also well-read English as a second language speakers. Because we use the Oxford comma and emdashes, which (go figure) GPT also uses.
Akurei00
I had a professor that I'm pretty sure didn't ever read anything that was submitted. I literally submitted a coding project that was just me saying something along the lines of, "I couldn't get the example code to compile, I don't understand this, and I'm not sure what's wrong. I could use some feedback." Got a 100% on it. I legit wanted to learn, not just get a passing grade. Glad he left at the end of the semester.
sfrinlan
I was a teaching assistant for a few programming classes when I was in college, and it would have super pissed me off if any of the professors had been like this. Sorry yours sucked :-(
Akurei00
I wasn't happy, for sure. He was awful. I think he was Chinese, I'm not really sure, but his English wasn't great, he couldn't get his own code to work during classes, and he often would just run through his prepared slides and kinda brush off any questions. I always questioned if he even knew what he was teaching.
There were some really good professors too, but he sure as hell wasn't one of them. Subsequent class content was of course built on it so I was able to fill in the gaps.
sfrinlan
Ah, I had that experience in a couple math courses and, in part, caused me to switch majors to computer science because I didn't grasp anything from those math classes (Calc 3, Diff EQ).
faphappyscreencappy
The fact that this AI-gotcha article uses an AI-generated image (note the hash words in the upper right) takes away from its merit.
UhSadHJ84
Shit running down the hill
InfocalypseRising
Also the last time I saw it the question wasn't "madagascar," it was "insert the sentence 'Julius Caesar was banned from the group chat'"
GravyEducation
Et tu, group chat?
Xenarion
It's hard to say for sure at this resolution, but this just looks mirrored.
YepItsCancer
It's a mirror image from the prof's self-facing camera. The top words read "Tis this house" and the bottom is "bless" in cursive.
FestusMA
It’s got the stank on it. Fuck this shit.
TheMindEntropic
I heard shovels can be used as murder weapons. We should do away with Shovels and anyone caught trying to build anything, even if it's a much-needed canal, or something to transmit vital information for the rest of us, should be ostracised.
TheMindEntropic
I get really annoyed at how my fellow human beings are tethered to absolute concepts, like trying to comb hair with a butterknife.
CheeseB0t
Lol no it doesn't.
FestusMA
I agree. (I just like saying “stank”)
TuffyTDog
It's not an AI-generated image; it's just been flipped horizontally for some reason. The top line of the sign reads "Tis This House".
Camelspotting
It's 2026. How many people do you really think are dusting off the Photoshop skills just to emulate AI slop?
sfrinlan
faphappyscreencappy
Hunh. I had to re-examine that three or four times, that did *not* look like a "th-" even flipped. Weird, but thanks for the correction.
ChicksDigTrucks
I don't think you're entirely wrong. I found another mirrored video he made in the same room and it really says "Bless this house"
ChicksDigTrucks
https://www.tiktok.com/@iamjasongibson/video/7667259071355030797
testzero
Doesn't exactly make it much better, tbh. "We just mirrored this person's face horizontally for no reason. You can trust us as a reliable news source!"
thotterpop
Selfie camera (front facing one) trends to automatically be horizontally flipped unless changed in settings. Makes for an impromptu mirror.
sfrinlan
It's mirrored in the original tiktok posted by the professor, as far as I can tell https://www.tiktok.com/@iamjasongibson/video/7664639999479958797
9z2nf02h
The truth is more complicated. I believe this is an AI generated copy of a real video still. Here's the original tiktok video, this post, and another AI generated copy.
YouAreTheInsultMaster
reminds me of dinosaur chicken nuggets
BeatriceAine
Look at the differences in his mouth / teeth. You are right.
theskepticinme
Doing the real work. Bless you
sfrinlan
Yeah, seriously. Did they drop it into Photoshop and click the "Fuck this whole thing up" button?
FestusMA
That was an older version of Photoshop. The new v27.8 has a simplified “Suck” button in the layers menu