Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50% • Hacker News Board

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#111

Post by overgard » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 1:28 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #108

ponector wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But education is almost worthless now already. Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job and lucking real skills and experience. Ai is not a cause, it will simply speed up the degradation of the system.

> Nowadays pretty much everyone has a degree and then couldn't find a job The unemployment rate in the US is 3.7%. 38% of adults in the US have a college degree. 38% is hardly everyone, and if nobody can find a job, then the unemployment rate should be far higher than 3.7%, which is basically full employment.

I don't trust the unemployment numbers to be useful here because it's just measuring "do you have a job or not", not more important things like "does this job pay you enough to survive" or "do you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet". There are other metrics that look really bad. For example, from google: "The labor-force participation rate shrank to 61.5%, marking one of the lowest points in recent years as potential workers give up searching for employment." So, unemployment might be artificially low because a lot of people just.. gave up. I know a few people like that, and life on SSI checks is pretty grim! There's also this bit: "The U-6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time for economic reasons, sits at 8.2%"

Lets say you graduated with a STEM degree and now you're working at starbucks or walmart. Congrats you're employed! Is that sustainable or good? It's just not a useful metric. It's like the super rich pointing at the stock market and going "we're not in a recession, the number is going up!" and yet real buying power and wages are declining for everyone except the massively wealthy.

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#112

Post by parsimo2010 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #67

parsimo2010 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few thoughts related to this, and maybe I can get them out and ties them back together at the end. 1a. Yes, college isn’t right for everyone, and testing the traditional way with paper and pencil certainly disadvantages some students who would be star performers in a real world setting but are not a good fit for college classes. Think “Good Will Hunting” type people. They do exist. 1b. However, there are cer…

It's worth noting that even though you say people could just go online and start reading, college may be the last time most people ever read a textbook ever again. There's something tough about knowing that you want to do something but then somehow your daily instincts fight you. It's also why you can't just throw kids in front of Khan Academy.

> Somehow I have to incentivize students to learn the material on their own... And a really effective way to do that is a graded test ...

I know. The desire to get a degree or the "threat" of wasted tuition and disappointed family members is really what gets most students to crack a book. Most people aren't self-motivated to learn. If people were self-motivated to learn the material, as opposed to getting a credential or some other reason for being in college, I wouldn't need to worry about cheaters.

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#113

Post by lubujackson » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

avaer wrote: post #16

Seems like an application of Goodhart's law; measuring worth by degree or grades stopped measuring learning or ability. This was a lot harder to cheat before AI, but now the floodgates are open and grades and degrees earned post-AI are showing that they mean little. Cheating on college tests should be a jailable criminal offense (similar to computer fraud) so that there is dignity in the degree again. Considering the…

This won't happen for the same reason very few professors stand up to this shit and why everyone gets straight A's at Harvard now - Goodhart's Law again. The money involved means getting accepted into the school is the whole task, grades are irrelevant and learning is opt-in at best. Stamp the kids, extract the money, funnel it up to the administration.

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#114

Post by lubujackson » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

mattas wrote: post #56

iepathos wrote: post #45

The article, the teacher, and the general academic community skips the hard question when it comes to AI and that's whether these exams are testing knowledge that is still worth internalizing in the same way? Academia has a long history of lagging behind acceptance of new cognitive tools where they claim to want to defend the students, but instead defend the assignments of the past at the expense of the students. Cal…

Why bother learning anything when you can just use AI?

You need to know what to ask and what the answer means. Also, using proper terminology greatly increases LLM accuracy to situate the response in the correct domain.

Ask an LLM to "clean up this code applying SOLID principles" is much more prescriptive than "clean up this code".

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#115

Post by yamillove » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

sevenseacat wrote: post #100

yamillove wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> That’s why America is the Greatest Country on Earth, ever. hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahhahahahahahahahhaahah

Well, it’s definitely not Australia

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#116

Post by lubujackson » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #61

iepathos wrote: post #45

The article, the teacher, and the general academic community skips the hard question when it comes to AI and that's whether these exams are testing knowledge that is still worth internalizing in the same way? Academia has a long history of lagging behind acceptance of new cognitive tools where they claim to want to defend the students, but instead defend the assignments of the past at the expense of the students. Cal…

I have a few thoughts related to this, and maybe I can get them out and ties them back together at the end. 1a. Yes, college isn’t right for everyone, and testing the traditional way with paper and pencil certainly disadvantages some students who would be star performers in a real world setting but are not a good fit for college classes. Think “Good Will Hunting” type people. They do exist. 1b. However, there are cer…

I think the reality is that you should focus on and serve the 2c group (best students who use AI to fill gaps or speed up learning). We have 10s of thousands (or more) students taking advanced math every year. Only a slice of those pursue PhDs and even fewer contribute anything meaningful.

This is how it has been for years and AI doesn't really stunt that as long as students actually care about learning the material. Those kids will be fine. The kids that are fulfilling a prereq will be fine, for the most part, but will walk on crutches their whole lives (use AI) which might be a reasonable choice.

What we lose is the signal of which kids are interested in learning and which kids aren't. Grades and effort used to be the signal, now I think it has to be more about engagement" who asks questions, who comes in with strange ideas, who actually is struggling at times (actually grappling with the material) or learning things outside of the assignments.

Big picture, I think teachers should focus on teaching the learners and trying to motivate more students to join them. That has been the real job all along, AI just lays it bare.

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#117

Post by yamillove » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #102

yamillove wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it’s the country that most people who leave their country risk their lives to move to. So at least most immigrants on earth agree with me.

If I were to nitpick, I would say that they try to move to a idealised version of the US that never quite existed. This romanticised version has been pervasively depicted in mass consumption media for many decades. More meaningful perhaps would be to count the immigrants from developed countries and immigrants that earn above the median in their respective countries and/or go to the US and earn above the American med…

[dead]

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#118

Post by piloto_ciego » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #89

piloto_ciego wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.

Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.

Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#119

Post by piloto_ciego » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #85

piloto_ciego wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over my (and many other's) dead body. Don't be so cynical. edit to add: I feel like a lot about this negative "ermagerd fascism is imminent" stuff is poisoning the well of discourse. Is it a threat? Yup. Can I envision a scenario where the bad guys win and I get "the wall" after my LLM moderated kangaroo court? Totally. Do I think that's very likely? No. And I think the immediate appeal to "doooooom!" is a thought ki…

Cynical? The press release for the latest Grok version is sitting at the top of the front page. And half the people on this site don't see the problem with that. They'll welcome their roman-saluting overlords with open arms.

You should have more faith in humanity, otherwise the fascists have already won.

Re: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

#120

Post by drtz » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

KetoManx64 wrote: post #83

piloto_ciego wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're angry at, the thing that you're upset about? It's capitalism, it's the coupling of education with jobs, it's credentialism being overturned by new technology, etc. I think education is incredibly important, but I understand that I'm going to have to retrain myself a little bit. A college degree can no-longer be assumed to be a proxy for having put in the effort to deeply study something. Now what's t…

Capitalism: > an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market Any semblance of capitalism we have is a shambling corpse barely getting around. Do you know who pulls on all the strings of our economy, gives out s…

> Any semblance of capitalism we have is a shambling corpse barely getting around. Do you know who pulls on all the strings of our economy, gives out student aid loans to kids who just barely graduates high school? Who controls market interest rates, and gives massive multi billion dollar contracts to Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Facebook, Google, Microsoft? Who approved of the printing of the 50% increase in the dollar supply in the last 5 years?

Nothing in your provided definition of capitalism precludes government control of money supply, taxation, regulation, or even government contracts.

Private ownership still owns capital goods and private decision is the primary driver of investment, prices, production and distribution in most industries. This is why we have a hard time with things that are obviously good for society as a whole, like renewable energy, efficient transportation, and low-cost housing, that don't have a competitive short-term return on investment.