Graduate used artificial intelligence to cheat on exam — and still got a degree

A GRADUATE used artificial intelligence to cheat on an exam – and still graduated.

Pieter Snepvangers, 22, got Microsoft’s controversial software ChatGPT to write a 2,000-word essay.

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He gave the result to a university lecturer for correction – who passed it with a score of 2:2.

Londoner Pieter recently got a 2-1 in Politics and Social Policy from Bristol University – without cheating. But as an experiment, he asked a professor at another institution if he could take her last year’s socio-political assessment to see if he could tell if AI had written it.

He started by asking the software the essay question and asked for 2,000 words.

The software was initially only able to return 365 words. So Pieter asked him ten separate questions and eventually got back 3,500 words.

He then took the best paragraphs and copied and pasted them in an order that “resembled the structure of an essay.”

Pieter said: “20 minutes total to write an essay designed to demonstrate 12 weeks of learning. Not bad. I nervously sent it to my lecturer and awaited the verdict.”

The lecturer said the essay used “good correct language” and he could have been convinced it was written by a lazy student.

He also said “it wasn’t the worst in terms of content”. The lecturer added: “You definitely can’t cheat on a first-class finish, but you can on a 2-2.”

Pieter added: “ChatGPT is only three months old. You wouldn’t bet that you could write an essay worthy of a 2:1 in another three months.”