WAY back in the day, our TV screen suddenly burst into life with a very long advert for the Fiat Strada which claimed had been hand-built by robots.
It was a fatally flawed ad campaign from the get-go as robots do not have hands, particularly ones in 1979 when the advert was filmed.
Also judging by the reliability problems the model car infamously suffered from, the car giant probably wished they had been built by local Italians wearing blue boiler suits like they usually were.
The groundbreaking advert was inspired by the former BBC programme Tomorrow’s World which wasted half an hour of your life each week telling us how everything would be transformed by the latest gadget.
Decades on, virtually none have actually transformed any part of our lives in any way shape or form.
But we all watched every Thursday as Judith Hann and Raymond Baxter talked us through bizarre contraptions invented by bearded, and almost certainly single, men in their sheds in rural England somewhere.
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It also inspired advertising agencies and so the most expensive campaign that had ever been launched was born. Designed with a computer. Silenced with a laser. Hand built by a robot.
Quite what the union leaders at the Fiat plant in Turin had to say for it all is unclear but I’m sure they took it in the spirit it was intended.
One thing that Mr Baxter and Ms Hann never flagged up on Tomorrow’s World as far as I can recall was how to use robots to cheat in university exams.
But students at Aberdeen and Robert Gordon universities have been rumbled for consulting artificial intelligence (AI) more than 2,400 times a month.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed that students have been investigated by their universities for cheating using online AI chatbots.
Aberdeen and Robert Gordon University and RGU have also both recently updated academic regulations to address cheating concerns caused by the technology.
It comes amidst a rise in students using technology such as the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT-4.
Since then, ChatGPT has made worldwide headlines after it proved itself capable of writing code, composing music, writing essays and even passing real-life exams.
Since then universities have been scrambling to keep up with the AI revolution to ensure their qualifications still hold merit.
The FOI showed that the ChatGPT website is visited on average 2,434 times each month at Robert Gordon through the national university system Eduroam.
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But there could be more who access it through the cloud or on their home connections.
Both institutions use the industry-leading plagiarism detection software Turnitin which is used by most British universities.
However, there are serious concerns that students could possibly write assignments using AI tools before rephrasing the essay, which makes detection virtually impossible.
A number of high-profile institutions in the UK and the US have already banned the tool.
Aberdeen University said it keeps its assessment approaches under review but encourages assessments less vulnerable to AI such as “applying learning in real-world scenarios”.
Robert Gordon GU has been more encouraging about the benefits that can be gained from using AI, while also acknowledging the concerns around academic integrity.
Say what you like about students but they certainly are an enterprising bunch.
As a former student at both of these universities, I just wish tools like this had been available in my day rather than the dusty old reference books in the libraries that I had to rely on.
Not that I overly relied on them as I probably spent more time on the playing fields and in the student union than I did in the library.
And when I say probably, I actually meant definitely.
But this robo-cheating is actually a very serious matter that could dramatically undermine the integrity of some university degrees.
Many employers already complain about the poor basic standards of reading, writing and numerical skills of school leavers.
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Now, many graduates could soon be spilling out into the workplace too with their previously cast-iron reference – namely, a degree – being tarnished.
If many are, simply effectively, asking Alexa, “how do I get a first class honours degree?” then the future workforce could be ill equipped. Cheating to gain a degree does nobody any good in the long-term.
I suppose the only way to crack down on robo-cheats is to call a Robocop.
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