from Hacker News

UK university students caught cheating using AI

by GeoAtreides on 6/15/25, 5:17 PM with 12 comments

• by pyman on 6/15/25, 5:50 PM

  You've basically got Einstein, Curie, Tesla, Newton, Charpentier, and Gladys West in your pocket, ready to help. We carry the sum of human knowledge around with us, but no one's teaching us how to actually use it. Schools are more focused on teaching you not to use it. That's the real problem.

  Our system still rewards memorisation over reasoning, and when students use AI to solve a problem it's treated as cheating, even if it's the same thing they'll use in the real world.

  IMO, teachers should see AI as an extension of a student's brain, not a replacement. Once that clicks, they'll start using it to unlock their students full potential, not shut it down out of fear.

  But... let's be honest. It takes skilled teachers to make that work. Letting students use AI without any guidance is just as damaging as banning it altogether.

  I told my students once: you're going to build a little app that solves a real problem in our school. It can be anything. You'll demo the app when it's done. But I don't want you to send me the code, I want the prompts you used to build it. The better your prompts, the better your grade.