• @Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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    1315 months ago

    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.

    • @technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      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.

      • @Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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        25 months 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.