Canadian University Cancels Coding Competition Over Suspected AI Cheating (uwaterloo.ca) 26
The university blamed it on "the significant number of students" who violated their coding competition's rules.
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp quotes this report from The Logic: Finding that many students violated rules and submitted code not written by themselves, the University of Waterloo's Centre for Computing and Math decided not to release results from its annual Canadian Computing Competition (CCC), which many students rely on to bolster their chances of being accepted into Waterloo's prestigious computing and engineering programs, or land a spot on teams to represent Canada in international competitions.
"It is clear that many students submitted code that they did not write themselves, relying instead on forbidden external help," the CCC co-chairs explained in a statement. "As such, the reliability of 'ranking' students would neither be equitable, fair, or accurate."
"It is disappointing that the students who violated the CCC Rules will impact those students who are deserving of recognition," the univeresity said in its statement. They added that they are "considering possible ways to address this problem for future contests."
"It is clear that many students submitted code that they did not write themselves, relying instead on forbidden external help," the CCC co-chairs explained in a statement. "As such, the reliability of 'ranking' students would neither be equitable, fair, or accurate."
"It is disappointing that the students who violated the CCC Rules will impact those students who are deserving of recognition," the univeresity said in its statement. They added that they are "considering possible ways to address this problem for future contests."
Make them compete in person (Score:4, Insightful)
It's that simple. It's the only way to ensure level playing field for everyone. It's you and what you know / can do vs the clock.
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Canada is a big country and the CCC's purpose is to engage students no matter where they're from. You're also allowed to participate from anywhere in the world if you want to.
When I did the CCC entrants wrote an exam (wrote, it was on paper) supervised by their local teachers and mailed their solutions to be graded. The top twenty or so were flown to Waterloo for a week to compete in person. It looks like the format is basically the same, [uwaterloo.ca] except the in-Waterloo part is called something else, so it was the l
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That's what we did in the mid 1990's. Made a trip from Ohio to University of Waterloo for the programming contest.
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But if you feel that using ChatGPT to answer their problems is ok, I asked it to generate an answer for your question which should be just as acceptable:
Yeah, every programmer builds on existing tools—no one's writing pure machine code from scratch. But in competitions like this, the point is to
AI Jeopardy? (Score:2)
Finally, a chance to beat Ken Jennings at his own game!
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Watson, 'Jeopardy!' champion' (2011) [ibm.com]
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Precisely. These competitions need to rethink their metrics. Unless they want to give the teams "toy" programming problems that can be solved in the course of a day, while enforcing a complete blackout from Internet access and hoping that someone isn't clever enough to work around it, then these contests are doomed.
What they should do is allow AI, but make the rules fav
Re: Define 'legitimate help' (Score:2)
Re: Define 'legitimate help' (Score:3)
Yeah - bigger problems seems right (Score:2)
I'm old enough to have been taught to write reports using COBOL. You really don't want to do that...
In the same way that the historic role of the computer programmer - turning highly specified instructions into computer code - has gone to be replaced by analyst programmers who work out what's needed and then write the code - the role of writing the code has been somewhat replaced by AI, though the test is also whether the code is bug resistant and secure, of course. At the moment AI code doesn't seem to be
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If you look at it that way, the problem is that people understand the competition in different ways. The first want to show how good they can write code, the others want to show how good they can create programs using AI.
Make separate competitions and it's fine. But if you want to take the challenge how to write code, you don't want the competition to use generated code.
Using a C++ compiler in a competition that expects you to write assembly is also cheating, even though nobody wants to forbid C++ or C++ th
Re: Define 'legitimate help' (Score:2)
Re: Define 'legitimate help' (Score:2)
Mod parent up!
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The CCC is actual computer science, not programming. It's basically a math competition where you have to write your solutions as a program. Your program does have to work, but the emphasis is on the algorithm.
AP CSP Students Allowed to Use AI to Develop Code (Score:2)
Meanwhile, as the April 30th deadline for high school students to submit their AP Computer Science Digital Portfolios approaches, it's worth noting that the College Board's 2024-25 Guidance for Artificial Intelligence Tools and Other Services varies greatly by course.
AP Art and Design Policy: "The use of artificial intelligence tools by AP Art and Design students is categorically prohibited at any stage of the creative process."
AP Computer Science Principles Policy: "AP Compu
If they can actually bug-fix the AI code... (Score:2)
Lifting something wholesale should remain forbidden, but AI still produces enough errors that fixing them displays programming skills and understanding of the program flow. I say let the vibe coding flow. There's no reasonable way to shut it down, and it is representative of what coders will be doing in the real world.
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An AI code competition would be perfectly fine. But in a competition you need to make sure that everyone uses the same set of tools, or at least is aware he can use it. You could even have a competition in which people show if they write better code than others generate using AI; but for that people need to be aware that AI is allowed.
And I would think that quite a few people want to challenge each other in writing code, without the need to compete with AI. Sometimes it may be fun to show that you can be fa
What did you expect? (Score:3)
Isn't the this the exact future that universities like this are investing in with every promotion of AI?
Waterloo is leading the way in AI education across society (promoting making people dependent on AI) [uwaterloo.ca]
Waterloo.AI’s Industry Day: Data — The Fuel for AI [uwaterloo.ca]> (promoting taking data from people without compensation)
Automation isn’t replacing auditors, it’s rewriting the job description [uwaterloo.ca] (which is to say fewer auditors with fewer skills will be needed, thus replacing auditors)
Even on their own "AI Institute" page they have a link specifically "for industry" [uwaterloo.ca] which they know are looking to use AI to drive down costs by lowering knowledge requirements because they even have articles about it!
These students using AI didn't cheat, they just rewrote the contest description.
Joining the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party when you aren't a leopard is always stupid.
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Came here to point out the same thing. AI (which it really isn't) is being pushed (forced) upon students as the next holy grail of technology. Now that they are using it they are "cheating". You need to pick a side, either you support AI as you claim, or not.
Re: What did you expect? (Score:2)
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The expectation for every competitor, that intrinsically must be capable of orthogonal thought, to mindlessly adhere to hypocritical rules isn't merely naive it's willfully ignorant. I don't think they were being willfully ignorant, I think they simply failed to realize the massive impact of their own hypocrisy.
Re: What did you expect? (Score:2)
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Maybe this will turn out to be the CCC's Waterloo.
Is this proof AI beats a CS degree? (Score:1)