Columbia University Suspends Student Behind Interview Cheating AI (businessinsider.com) 37
Columbia University has suspended the student who created an AI tool designed to help job candidates cheat on technical coding interviews, according to disciplinary documents seen by Business Insider. Chungin "Roy" Lee received a yearlong suspension for "publishing unauthorized documents" from a disciplinary hearing about his product, Interview Coder, not for creating the tool itself. Lee had signed a form agreeing not to disclose his disciplinary record or post hearing materials online.
Interview Coder, which sells for $60 monthly, is on track to generate $2 million in annual revenue, Lee said. The university initially placed him on probation after finding him responsible for "facilitation of academic dishonesty." Lee had already submitted paperwork for a leave of absence before his suspension. He told BI he plans to move to San Francisco, which "was my plan all along."
Interview Coder, which sells for $60 monthly, is on track to generate $2 million in annual revenue, Lee said. The university initially placed him on probation after finding him responsible for "facilitation of academic dishonesty." Lee had already submitted paperwork for a leave of absence before his suspension. He told BI he plans to move to San Francisco, which "was my plan all along."
No having a degree is not going to be a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I might not approve of his products or his ethics, but he has proven that he was able to get a viable business without getting a degree. He got the skills to be successful in life.
Re:No having a degree is not going to be a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
What's wrong with the product. Coding interviews are just leetcode bullshit these days.
Re:No having a degree is not going to be a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No having a degree is not going to be a problem (Score:4, Informative)
You are in the very small minority of hiring managers in tech who use legit interview methods. This tool is not designed to circumvent you. It's designed for the 99% of tech companies who force candidates to spend several hours taking leetcode tests with either an AI proctor or a very uninterested human proctor. There's no back and forth discussion about the issue. It's finish in this amount of time and we'll get back to you.
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Yep. Don't hate the player....hate the game.
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I actually dislike these hacker rank filters. As a hiring manager I believe it helps filter out some bad candidates but also some really good candidates as well, the ones I would actually want to hire. They are mostly useful for the recruiter which lacks the technical skill to actually filter out the mediocre candidates, so they use this so that it brings up the average level of the candidates that reach the hiring manager, but again, at the cost of throwing away the cream of the crop.
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The rest of us can do it without too much trouble.
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Nah, leetcode is like guys in the gym working on their glamour muscles. Looks good, but completely worthless.
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Instead, you'll go watch Netflix or Youtube, consume some drug/narcotic/alcohol of choice, and then complain about how the world is unfair.
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Bwaahaha! Bro, you really went the "You watch TV and drink beer so you're a shitty coder" argument? Nah, leetcode is literally glamour skills. I refuse to devote any time to shit that doesn't make me a better engineer.
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Again, your unwillingness to learn new skills is a negative. You've also shown limited ability to read, understand, and respond logically to what you've read.
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Man your self-worth must be really tied up in these glamour skills.
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Given how worthless a degree from Trump University errr. sorry I mean Columbia Univ... (honestly at this point why even call it a university) is he made the best possible call.
A university that shits on free speech and facilitates the deportation of the students they themselves sponsored is the antithesis of education. It deserves to be burnt to the ground.
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Invite the candidate to an in-person interview (Score:5, Insightful)
and roll in the whiteboard. Easy solution to AI cheating. Even if you don't know the syntax you should be able to articulate how you'd approach the problem, edge cases, etc.
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^This. And not just for coding but for troubleshooting or other work scenarios... real life is open book and this strategy lets people show they have the knowledge and experience needed to approach and tackle real problems rather than having lookupable details only someone fresh out of class, cert exam, or freshly walking away from a specialized role will have memorized.
The former is what makes someone good in this field whereas the latter doesn't yield much value, finding the former is tough whereas 1-3mon
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I don't see how this problem, as well as the problem of dishonest phantom job offers nobody is actually meant to be hired on, could be solved, without legislation making tho
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...I don't see how this problem, as well as the problem of dishonest phantom job offers nobody is actually meant to be hired on, could be solved, without legislation making those things punishable crimes.
There are three versions of solving this that I see happening right now:
(0) Recruitment firms, trusted ones, as filters
(1) Recruiting personnel from the hiring company going to one of just a few college campuses
(2) Friends/acquaintances of employees
The recruitment firm "solution" is just outsourcing the problem so I barely count that one.
The other two (1) and (2), are economically inefficient and unfair. Plenty of sharp people go to un-recruited colleges. And the friends thing lacks scale while also enco
Doesn't need the degree (Score:2, Flamebait)
The subtext here... (Score:2)
Companies are still relying on coding assessments as gatekeeping tools for industry. Wasting millions on HackerRank, etc.
The real scandal here (Score:2)
The real scandal here is that we live in a world where someone can pocket millions of dollars for "creating" something of absolutely no long-term value to society (or even of negative value), whereas people who work dilligently and honestly still get to worry about tomorrow.
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Hang on (Score:2)
Having a reliable bot that can churn out usable code isn't valueless. Sure it puts a few low talent coders out of a job, maybe they should retrain as pool cleaners. Then they can star in porn films, except that very few people want porn with spotty overweight basement dwellers as the male lead (with the exception of /. contributors).
The hard question: what do coders do? (Score:2)
To the extent that a product can do the job, to that extent the job has been automated away. $60 a month seems a cheap price to pay for an adequate coder!
Real world context (Score:3)
manager "Using all your tools and skills and experience please solve this problem"
me "Here ya go"
manager (subvocal) "fucking ace"
Once Again Schools Should Not Get to Pretend They (Score:2)
"Technical interviews are completely outside of what the university chooses to do, so it was really surprising that they decided to take any stance at all about this," Lee told BI.
Lee said he attended a first hearing on February 17 "without any animosity" and thought the situation would "blow over." However, he said he was asked during the meeting about "an extremely hypothetical" situation about how the AI tool could be used in class.
Before receiving the results of the first hearing, he submitted paperwork to take a leave of absence. He told BI he didn't see "a universe where I finished school" anyway.
After the first disciplinary hearing, Lee was placed on probation after Columbia found him responsible for the facilitation of academic dishonesty based on a claim that the tool could be used to cheat on school exams where LeetCode is meant to be used, Columbia said in the documents viewed by BI
It remains ridiculous that schools continue to view themselves as extrajudicial courts where they get to demand your testimony and then extract pretext to punish you according to their sensibilities of the moment.
Keep in mind you are often not allowed to have legal counsel but they start by telling you "oh just an informality"*
$2'000'000 (Score:1)
Could have been worse (Score:4, Interesting)
Cream of the crop or dregs of the barrel. (Score:1)
Paper and Pencil (Score:2)