Do they get points for ingenuity?

Young Turks

In Turkey, cheating on college entrance exams is an arrestable offense — and one enterprising youngster apparently tried to get away with it using an ingenious AI-powered scheme.

As the Daily Mail and Reuters report, police in the country's southwestern province of Isparta found that the unnamed student was using an elaborate homebrewed setup to allegedly cheat on the country's basic aptitude test, known as the Temel Yeterlilik Testi or TYT.

Police video shared by the Mail reveals just how much work went into the cheating contraption, which apparently included a smartphone, a router or modem hidden in the student's shoe, an earpiece that fed them answers, and a shirt-button camera enhanced by AI software.

In the video, an extremely dripped-out Turkish police officer demonstrates how the device works. Using the button camera, the AI system used by the student "reads" the question on a piece of paper and a voice agent answers on the phone, which is then transmitted to the earpiece. The entire thing is seemingly powered by the "router" — likely a mistranslation of modem, Ars Technica posits — that the resourceful student hid in their shoe.

According to that same video, police discovered the deceptive gizmo after a search of the student's person, conducted because their "behavior and actions were suspicious." As Reuters noted in its reporting on the matter, another person who was helping the student was also detained, though it's unclear of what crime the alleged accomplice was charged with.

 

Cheating Hearts

This case, while notable for the ingenuity and preparation involved in the scheme, seems like a logical progression in AI's usefulness as in academic cheating.

Almost immediately after OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world in November 2022, stories began cropping up about students using the chatbot for schoolwork. Just two months after its initial release, a survey found that a whopping 89 percent of college students admitted using it for homework, and 48 percent had used it on in-home exams or quizzes. There's little doubt this kind of use will continue even as administrators and institutions try to curb it.

While other students around the world have been caught using AI on exams, the case of this inventive Turk is especially newsworthy because they were arrested for the offense — an intersection of heavy-handed totalitarianism and high-tech cheating deterrence that may likely serve as a cautionary tale in that country and beyond.

More on AI-infused devices: Maker of Disastrous "AI Pin" Device Admits It Can Cause Fire While Charging


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