{"id":6488,"date":"2025-11-05T17:12:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/class-caught-cheating-apologizes\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T17:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:12:26","slug":"class-caught-cheating-apologizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/class-caught-cheating-apologizes\/","title":{"rendered":"Professors Aghast as Class Caught Cheating \u201cSincerely\u201d Apologizes in the Worst Possible Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

If you get caught cheating by your professor, you would be wise to beg for mercy, grovel at their feet, and pour every ounce of your soul into putting on the contrite performance of a lifetime. You\u2019ll never do it again, you vow, after reminding them of your recently deceased distant relative. If there was ever a moment to put some real effort into your education, this big apology would be it.<\/p>\n

In an age of ChatGPT, however, even that might be a lot to ask.<\/p>\n

After catching dozens of their students cheating in a data science course, two professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were inundated with what they thought were nearly a hundred heartfelt emails from the students apologizing for their mistakes.<\/p>\n

But you probably see where this is going. The overwhelming majority of those emails, the professors noticed, appeared to themselves be written by an AI chatbot. The duo, Karle Flanagan and Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, confronted their students about it in class, projecting their similarly worded apologies on screen. The phrase \u201csincerely apologize\u201d is highlighted in all of the dozens of examples.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018Dear Professor Flanagan, I want to sincerely apologize,’\u201d Flanagan told the New York Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cAnd I was like, Thank you. They\u2019re owning up to it. They\u2019re apologizing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I got another email, the second email, and then the third,\u201d Flanagan added. \u201cAnd then everybody sort of sincerely apologizing, and suddenly it became a little less sincere.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest stupefying example of how AI has irreversibly transformed education, and undoubtedly for the worse. It\u2019s not just the tech\u2019s effortless automation that\u2019s so alarming, robbing students of the challenge of actually having to use their brain to think through a problem<\/a>; its very existence has fostered a climate of distrust, where the relationship between pupil and professor is clouded by suspicion and resentment. The professor must constantly be suspicious of a student using AI to cheat. And the student resents being subjected to this scrutiny, sometimes unfairly. Many have been wrongly accused of using AI<\/a> \u2014 accusations that themselves <\/em>are sometimes made with AI tools.<\/p>\n

Flanagan and Fagen-Ulmschneider said they were on the lookout for cheating after they noticed that students who skipped class were still answering time-sensitive questions that were designed to only be accessed through an app while physically in attendance to scan a QR code, they told the NYT<\/em>. Answering these went to their participation grade. After some digging, the professors realized that the truants were getting tipped off by their peers about when to answer the questions.<\/p>\n

Their confrontation with the students about the \u201csincere\u201d apologies went mega-viral on Reddit<\/a>, after a student posted a photo of the scene. Going viral, though, wasn\u2019t the professors intent. \u201cWe were ready to move past it but then we woke up the next day and it was on the front page of Twitter and Reddit!\u201d Flanagan said in a video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The embarrassment, it seems, was ample punishment. No disciplinary action was taken against the students \u2014 but they definitely got a schooling.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife lesson: if you\u2019re going to apologize, don\u2019t use ChatGPT to do it,\u201d Flanagan said in the video.<\/p>\n

More on AI:<\/strong> University Using AI to Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating With AI<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post Professors Aghast as Class Caught Cheating \u201cSincerely\u201d Apologizes in the Worst Possible Way<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you get caught cheating by your professor, you would be wise to beg for mercy, grovel at their feet, and pour every ounce of your soul into putting on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,198,3842],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-education","category-future-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}