Google Temporarily Pauses AI-Powered 'Homework Helper' Button in Chrome Over Cheating Concerns (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179384686
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/20/029249/google-temporarily-pauses-ai-powered-homework-helper-button-in-chrome-over-cheating-concerns
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/teachers-got-mad-about-a-cheat-button-in-chrome-now-google-s-pausing-it/ar-AA1MNT5e
> A student taking an online quiz sees a button appear in their Chrome browser: "homework help." Soon, Google's artificial intelligence has read the question on-screen and suggests "choice B" as the answer. The temptation to cheat was suddenly just two clicks away Sept. 2, when Google quietly added a "homework help" button to Chrome, the world's most popular web browser. The button has been appearing automatically on the kinds of course websites used by the majority of American college students and many high-schoolers, too. Pressing it launches [2]Google Lens , a service that reads what's on the page and can provide an "AI Overview" answer to questions — including during tests.
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> Educators I've spoken with are [3]alarmed . Schools including [4]Emory University , the [5]University of Alabama , the [6]University of California at Los Angeles and the [7]University of California at Berkeley have alerted faculty how the button appears in the URL box of course sites and their limited ability to control it.
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> Chrome's cheating tool exemplifies Big Tech's continuing gold rush approach to AI: launch first, consider consequences later and let society clean up the mess. "Google is undermining academic integrity by shoving AI in students' faces during exams," says Ian Linkletter, a librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology who first flagged the issue to me. "Google is trying to make instructors give up on regulating AI in their classroom, and it might work. Google Chrome has the market share to change student behavior, and it appears this is the goal."
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> Several days after I contacted Google about the issue, the company told me it had temporarily paused the homework help button — but also didn't commit to keeping it off. "Students have told us they value tools that help them learn and understand things visually, so we're running tests offering an easier way to access Lens while browsing," Google spokesman Craig Ewer said in a statement.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/teachers-got-mad-about-a-cheat-button-in-chrome-now-google-s-pausing-it/ar-AA1MNT5e
[2] https://lens.google/#translate
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/1neesb9/google_will_now_create_answers_for_any_test_or/
[4] https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/digitalmatters/2025/09/09/what-is-googles-homework-help
[5] https://cit.ua.edu/known-issue-google-chrome-homework-help/
[6] https://humtech.ucla.edu/alert/alert-google-lens-homework-help-in-bruin-learn-quizzes/
[7] https://rtl.berkeley.edu/news/google-chrome-%E2%80%9Chomework-help%E2%80%9D-bcourses-quizzes
Humanities professor here (Score:2)
I banned all tech from my classroom before the pandemic, but had to bring it back for obvious reasons. Now it's banned again. This is the only answer to the issue. Don't give me that shit that I am not preparing my students for the future. First, none of us know the future. Second, coding was to prepare students for the future. If I can get my students to think autonomously, and learn how to articulate their thoughts persuasively, and not simply copy the educated guesses of LLMs, my students come out ahead.
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What do you think of the argument that great men (people) stand on the shoulders of others, and that AI is a shoulder?
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> What do you think of the argument that great men (people) stand on the shoulders of others, and that AI is a shoulder?
The great men in question have all worked through the thoughts of those upon whose shoulders they stood. Even if you could make a case that LLMs understand the words they use (they don't: we all know they simply predict the likelihood that certain words will appear in a certain order in a certain context based on massive training), you certainly could not argue that those depending on LLMs (and in this case, we're talking about university students) have exercised the same care as, say, Newton did in in work
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To change the subject a bit (radically), do you think that people are able to question authority anymore? Do they, most other people have the same thoughts? I ask this as you are a humanities teacher. Me, Personally, have digested many books about dystopias, and I wonder if you think we are in one now? '
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This is simply, humanizing a machine. So pick a machine: Thus, great men stand of the 'shoulders' of clitoral vibrators. Doesn't sound so clever now, right.
Sure we depend on machines, we use them to advance our present and describe our history, to a point. We talk about the "Eagle" lunar lander and astronauts Armstrong & Aldrin. Or, the "Nautilus" and Captain Nemo.
Pretending the machine is human, is a recipe for disaster. There's many novels about that very problem.
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One example, my boss who has a Doctorate in Electronics, keeps referring to ChatGTP as "Him". I am concerned. I tried to talk to him yesterday about people getting crazy about the AI's. They are not a "him", or an "her", they are a prediction machine, and feels nothing towards "you". Many sci-fi novels have been written about this.. but it is happening around me in real time.
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Great folk stand on the shoulders of others, not on the metaphorical crutches of others.
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I am an American, and I am still wondering why we have the most people in Jail? We call ourselves a free country, yet we lock up the most people. In my experience, it is because we have the most traps in front of us. We are born, we learn, there is a trap here, there is a trap there. We get sucked into the abyss. That does not seem like Freedom. Freedom should feel like we can eat when we are hungry, are clothed when we are naked, and we have a roof when it is raining.
USE Google and f*ck you (Score:2)
Blurting out the answer is not helping.
Google is attempting vendor lock-in, fuck everyone else. What sells matters (to rich people), the impending idiocracy doesn't.
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Back in the "good old days", Google said: "don't be evil". They lied.
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The evolution of Google, already long ago, was s/don't//.
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I still like the idea that a persons information should be their own. If they want to rent out to the likes of google or facebook, then that is their privilege. Otherwise, their information just goes "poof" into nowhere.
Just do all exams in person (Score:2)
Pen and paper. Problem solved.
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I am not sure kids can even write anymore. Did you get that they don't learn cursive? I am an older guy with no kids, I appreciate my younger days with PBS, teaching me the alphabet. I really don't understand what kids are learning now days. I see them simply hitting things on a tablet, and I hope that they can comprehend English at this point. And oh damn, I sound like my grand dad, I know that.
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I now do all hand-written assignments, and one of my students asked me the other day if I could read cursive.
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I feel comforted by that. Like the Human race existed and is important. I remember as a child, that this is all BS, and hey, let me be a wild animal. As an adult I feel more like screw that child, and make him believe what I do. As a seasoned person, I am wondering about the balance of it all.
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I do have them type them up at home so that they are legible, but I have them work from pictures of their essays that they take before they leave class, and I keep the hand-written originals. So I guess I am not completely tech free, but that is a tiny compromise.
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I was a teachers aid before I got my Bachelors Degree. I remember when I graded a paper from another student, and he did not type it up. According to the Professor, if it was not typed, it was down graded about 20%. It was told to everybody. Yet, that person threw a fit at me. I guess my point is that things have changed. In my world typed things do seem less important. I can certainly write in cursive or in plain characters, but back in the 80's, my professors valued things that were typed up.
I think AI is great! (Score:3)
However, if I had AI as a kid, I don't think that I would have a brain cell left. I could not type this comment, and I would not have the ability to have this thought. If a young one would like to debate me, please type it on your own keyboard as I do, and please give an example.