A Professor Created a Trap in His Midterm to Catch Students Using AI. Nearly All Made the Same Mistake
Dr. Jason Gibson said 32 of 35 students failed part of a midterm after hidden text exposed copied AI answers.
- Alcorn State University professor Jason Gibson caught 32 of 35 students using artificial intelligence on history midterms by hiding the word "Madagascar" in white text within the assignment prompt.
- Students who copied the assignment prompt into an AI chatbot without proofreading unknowingly included the hidden word in their answers, producing surreal AI-generated sentences like "Madagascar purple bicycle whispers to the ceiling," Gibson said.
- Thirty-Two students failed a portion of their midterm because they used AI to generate their entire response, though Gibson noted his goal was not to embarrass anyone.
- After grading, Gibson invited students to appeal if they believed they were graded unfairly; only two students responded, and one student's grade was changed after claiming dark mode made the hidden text invisible.
- Gibson's incident reflects a national debate as professors rethink assignments, with Gibson saying, "We're all just out here innovating and implementing, and trying to hold on to some level of academic integrity in the process.
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Mississippi College Students Caught Cheating After Prof Puts Hidden AI-Only Text on Midterm
In this The Post Millennial article, Ben Tumulty reports that a Mississippi history professor caught 32 out of 35 students cheating with AI by embedding an invisible white-font prompt in the midterm instructions that forced ChatGPT to insert nonsensical statements about Madagascar. Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University, secretly placed a hidden...
NBC Chicago
A professor created a trap in his midterm to catch students using AI. Nearly all made the same mistake
As colleges grapple with the rise of AI, a Mississippi history professor’s creative attempt to protect academic integrity has struck a nerve online.
A U.S. university professor created a "trap" to identify students who used artificial intelligence to answer their evidence: he inserted an invisible command into the statement, which would only be captured by anyone who copied the text for tools like ChatGPT. The result was that 32 of the 35 students in the class delivered essays with sentences marked and completely meaningless and ended up failing in the evaluation. Technological life-savings?…
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