[HN Gopher] University of Waterloo withholds coding contest resu...
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University of Waterloo withholds coding contest results over
suspected AI use
Author : amichail
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-04-26 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thelogic.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (thelogic.co)
| StefanBatory wrote:
| "The decision to cancel the release of this year's results will
| weigh most on Grade 12 students who won't get a chance to do it
| again next year, Shin said. But he didn't think the onus was on
| the university. "It's obviously a cheater's fault, right? They're
| the ones who cheated. They're the one to break the rules. It's
| their fault morally and logically."
|
| ... I guess so, but how it is fault of someone who did not cheat?
| They are lumped in together, like it's their fault too. Not that
| I don't get that, but still.
| mannykannot wrote:
| They are the victims.
| winwang wrote:
| I agree, it sucks to be lumped in. What's your proposed
| solution?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Hand written coding. The wheel comes full circle.
| morkalork wrote:
| Computers with no internet access and nothing but the
| compiler chain and text documentation installed. Coding
| like it's 1980s again!
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Which is in any case a better test of the core of coding,
| which is about figuring out algorithms and data
| structures, not writing glue code to connect various APIs
| together.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| This challenge, as described from some of the linked
| pages, is exactly a challenge on algorithms and data
| structures not on gluing APIs together. The problem with
| _that_ is that it 's exactly the kind of challenge that
| LLMs do well at because there's a glut of material to
| train on.
|
| The challenge is figuring out how to provide a novice
| (high school students) with a skill appropriate challenge
| to assess them on that is also not trivially solved by
| the use of an LLM, and you likely can't. Or you go the IT
| route and restrict what's available on and from the
| computers (see my comment about how ACM and IEEE contests
| used to do things, they may still run that way but I'm
| uninvolved so don't know).
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| can I have a printed, spiral-bound manual instead? I
| really miss 80's documentation: quality, complete, and
| quirky-fun
| leereeves wrote:
| > Computers with no internet access and nothing but the
| compiler chain and text documentation installed. Coding
| like it's 1980s again!
|
| I love this comment because in 20 years coding with no AI
| will be "coding like it's 2020 again".
| tenpies wrote:
| Just the participant, a tall deck of blank IBM punch cards,
| and a punch. None of that fancy punch card machinery
| either.
|
| Return to tradition[1].
|
| [1] https://www.ibm.com/history/punched-card
| ohgr wrote:
| As a notorious bastard I used to run C# code tests by
| giving someone a flattened windows 7 with the .net SDK
| installed and nothing else. Also no network connection.
| How the potential engineer dealt with it was interesting.
|
| We had a couple of people shrug it off and do it in
| notepad and csc quite happily. They were of course hired.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| That's why I said it's not like I don't get it.
|
| There's no solution at this point for this year.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| It's a solved problem. Look at medical schools, we're not
| pumping out chatgpt doctors because we have actual in-person
| test proctoring that includes checking biometrics, taking
| photographs of the individual for posterity, oral
| examinations, etc.
|
| Right now educational institutions are facing budget
| shortfalls and responding by expanding remote education
| opportunities while compromising the quality of education not
| just because of cheating but because often the content and
| social circumstances are inferior. We are making short term
| decisions as an easy-fix to budget issues that will have
| substantial long-term consequences.
|
| The result is that the value of an American college degree is
| plummeting (ironically while costs still are increasing).
| This is part of the reason GenZ are starting to revolt
| against various institutions - they are the ones being
| screwed the most.
|
| The right path forward is acknowledging this insanity in the
| budgeting process, employment process, and loan markets. We
| won't do that though because it means admitting how much has
| been fucked up - institutions will double down and triple
| down in the face of DOGE threats.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Look at medical schools
|
| Medical schools don't take in 18 year olds in North
| America. They can have more in depth entrance exams since
| the people come in are more mature.
|
| > This is the reason GenZ
|
| Or perhaps it may be the misinformation and rhetoric being
| used to inflame tried and true anti-intellectual
| sentiments.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > Medical schools don't take in 18 year olds in North
| America. They can have more in depth entrance exams since
| the people come in are more mature.
|
| Why do you need to be more mature to take an exam? We're
| not talking about toddlers - many (most?) of them are
| legal adults.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Legally yes, but if you'd had to interact with large
| numbers of those entering university for the first time
| you'd know they very much are not mentally adults yet.
|
| All of which is beside the point since this conversation
| is focusing on the most prestigious universities around.
| Most universities and colleges in North America don't
| need such exams since they already accept basically
| anyone who applies.
| MegaButts wrote:
| I still don't understand why taking an in-person exam is
| considered some difficult ordeal that we cannot expect
| younger people to endure. I have no idea what culture you
| come from that this is even a talking point, let alone a
| debate. It has never occurred to me ever in any context
| that having an exam being proctored means I need to be
| mature? I took many hours-long proctored exams long
| before I was 18. What does being mature have to do with
| having a literal adult in the room? If anything it
| requires less maturity because you're requiring
| oversight.
|
| I truly do not understand your point at all.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I'm not arguing against proctored exams I'm arguing
| against:
|
| > proctoring that includes checking biometrics, taking
| photographs of the individual for posterity, oral
| examinations, etc.
|
| While I personally do actually believe test like that
| would be better than the kinds of exams being taken by
| students _while at university_ I don't see it as a
| realistic option for entrance exams. That sort of thing
| is simply not part of North American educational culture
| to a large degree. And for medical schools people
| practice and study and drill for months in order to
| prepare themselves for it.
|
| Also, for most colleges and universities it simply makes
| no sense to introduce such an exam (or any at all) since
| they accept everyone who applies; they need to in order
| to remain financially viable.
| MegaButts wrote:
| Ah, now I see your point. I suspect the culture will
| change with the times assuming people want to give any
| credibility to universities moving forward. I remember
| how rampant cheating was where I went (decades ago) that
| I already put very little weight into degrees.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I hope so. Though the economic realities often take
| precedence. The university of Waterloo is one of their
| most prestigious universities, so they might be able to
| create more rigorous entry requirements (though that does
| bring up the question of "are you really teaching
| students to be competent or simply pre-filtering for only
| competent students"). But they can only do this if it
| doesn't impact their ability to stay solvent.
| gpm wrote:
| > I don't see it as a realistic option for entrance
| exams.
|
| This isn't even an entrance exam. It's an extracurricular
| event for high school students that people primarily
| write for fun...
|
| > since they accept everyone who applies;
|
| This on the other hand doesn't describe Waterloo CS at
| all.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > extracurricular
|
| A) I know this. B) If it gives you a significant benefit
| to admissions, it will quickly become a metric to be
| gamed.
|
| > doesn't describe Waterloo CS
|
| Sure and I've said as much in another comment, but the
| person I replied to was making a broad comment about
| higher education in general.
| vunderba wrote:
| > chatgpt doctors because we have actual in-person test
| proctoring that includes checking biometrics, taking
| photographs of the individual for posterity, oral
| examinations, etc
|
| Yep. Related, but the software engineering industry did
| actually have (for a brief time) a PE Exam but it was sadly
| discontinued.
|
| https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-
| engineerin...
|
| There's still a PE Electrical and Computer: Computer
| Engineering one but its definitely more focused on
| hardware.
|
| https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/electrical-and-computer
| gpm wrote:
| Software Engineering in Ontario, Canada, where the
| University of Waterloo is, still does PE exams and has PE
| designations for software engineers...
|
| Though most software developers actually go through CS
| not Software Engineering and that doesn't get you the PE
| designation.
|
| https://www.peo.on.ca/apply/become-professional-
| engineer/tec...
| gpm wrote:
| > The result is that the value of an American college
| degree is plummeting
|
| This Canadian university run high school coding contest
| isn't part of an American college degree. In fact it has no
| relation to any of that description. It isn't American. It
| isn't relating to a college at all by the Canadian
| understanding of that word (we distinguish between college
| and university, and Waterloo is the latter). It isn't for
| university (or college) students or related to a university
| (or college) degree.
|
| > Look at medical schools, we're not pumping out chatgpt
| doctors because we have actual in-person test proctoring
| that includes checking biometrics, taking photographs of
| the individual for posterity, oral examinations, etc.
|
| Extracurricular contests for high school students do not
| have the same funding or standards as medical exams to
| become a doctor for obvious reasons (in Canada, where I
| participated in these, but presumably anywhere).
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Sue the university on the grounds that this was a reasonably
| foreseeable event with proven solutions, i.e. properly
| proctored, in-person testing. "We're too cheap to do it"
| isn't an excuse.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The competitions are very useful both in terms of providing
| students the ability to demonstrate ability that isn't
| visible within a school curriculum (these students are way
| more advanced) and motivating the students with something
| to work towards & train on.
|
| I have done this competition (I think) and what your
| suggesting just is not reasonable. This is a distributed
| competition administered locally on a volunteer basis. This
| isn't some formalized test & trying to get Waterloo to pay
| for all the local proctors would result in this competition
| shutting down which would be net not good. I don't have
| insight into how the competition has changed in the 20
| years since I took it so I don't know why they don't have
| local proctors or lost faith in them. Maybe COVID-era
| adaptations?
|
| Honestly, I think the better solution is to adjust the
| difficulty to be AI-proof but it may be hard to do so at
| this level of academia.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| If it can't work as is, and it can't work in a way that
| removes cheating (which the university feels invalidates
| the results for all participants) then it can't work.
| Getting a load of students to prepare and participate
| only to pull the rug out from under them isn't
| acceptable. That's a waste of their limited time and
| energy during a critical period of their lives.
| gpm wrote:
| What percentage of the $10 (CAD, tax free) entrance fee do
| you think the court should award in damages?
| EA-3167 wrote:
| You're describing one small part of the family of damages
| (in the legal sense), and that isn't how common law
| works. To draw from the rich vocabulary of HN, think of
| the opportunity cost imposed by the time wasted on
| preparation and the test itself, that also has value
| beyond the entrance fee.
|
| Putting that aside, you don't just sue for money, you can
| sue for different outcomes and injunctive relief. For
| example you could sue to have the results released as
| planned.
| gpm wrote:
| Under common law courts don't award speculative damages -
| i.e. opportunity cost. If you had concrete damages, like
| you bought a computer just to participate in this
| contest, you might theoretically have a claim for the
| cost of the computer... that's simply not realistically
| the case though.
|
| Injunctive relief for not publishing known to be
| incorrect test rankings? Not likely.
|
| A FOI request might get you access to the rankings if you
| really cared... I'm not quite sure what the contours of
| FIPPA (roughly equivalent to America's FOIA) is with
| regards to our universities but I believe it generally
| applies to them. At the same time it could easily fall
| within privacy limitations.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| For ACM and IEEE programming contests they used to be
| conducted "offline". Not sure how they're done these days,
| but participants would have a computer connected to a LAN and
| shared resources for themselves and their team (one or more
| computers depending on the particular format). Put students
| in a room with a disconnected computer and an IDE or a
| computer connected only to a LAN. Submissions can be handled
| either with a local contest server or sneaker net to the one
| networked computer managed by the proctor.
|
| It's also possible to severely lock down the network
| connectivity of the computers so they cannot access the
| internet at large but only the contest servers during the
| competition if there is an online submission required.
| criddell wrote:
| Allow the use of AIs.
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| Archived/paywall bypass: https://archive.is/ZEfI8
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| Take this article with a grain of salt. Much of its argument
| quotes from TurnItIn, which was already an unethical scourge in
| earlier days, and already ruined many students' lives with
| traditional information retrieval, but more recently pivoted to
| ruining students' lives with "AI" instead[1].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/14/prove-f...
| (archived/paywall bypass) https://archive.is/BoVlG
| vander_elst wrote:
| Why isn't it possible to run these contexts in a computer room
| with no access to the Internet? This plus a minimal amount of
| supervision would remove cheating? Am I missing something? Maybe
| schools don't have a computer room these days?
| tmyklebu wrote:
| The second stage (on-site, ~20 competitors) is done like that.
|
| The first stage (this one, with ballpark 10000 competitors) is
| distributed and done in very heterogeneous environments, and it
| relies on local high school teachers taking time out of their
| day to set up whatever's needed, proctor the contest, and grade
| the results.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| So the problem is that the teachers were dishonest or not
| proctoring well, right? It doesn't sound to me like AI was
| the problem per se. Before LLMs you could have had
| participants using Stack Overflow to cheat.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You'd also have to make sure they were using clean computers
| without any local models installed, and coding models are
| pretty easy to run without high end GPUs.
|
| I don't know if I would consider this modern coding using
| modern coding tool chains anymore though. It might still be a
| nice competition to run, but it is increasingly displaced from
| what it means to be a professional programmer (I've stopped
| caring about these competition wins on resumes a long time
| ago).
| adverbly wrote:
| Or maybe have cameras set up recording the test taking with
| some AI analysis to detect cheating.
| tmyklebu wrote:
| This really is quite sad.
|
| The first stage of the CCC is written in pretty heterogeneous
| conditions. There are several thousand competitors across the
| world. Students use a language of their choice and their work is
| graded by their teacher against a rubric sent out by the contest
| organisers. I recall that the teacher has to send the work to
| Waterloo, postmarked within a couple of days after the contest.
|
| Sometime in the summer, the University of Waterloo then flies out
| and puts up the top 15 or 20 students in that more informal
| contest to compete in what was the "CCC Stage 2" and is now the
| "Canadian Computing Olympiad." This second contest is done under
| more controlled conditions and its results largely determine
| which four students will represent Canada at the International
| Olympiad in Informatics.
|
| The first stage has always relied on teachers' honesty. The
| contest organisers mail contest packets to teachers in advance of
| the contest. Teachers have some time between contest day and when
| the results need to be mailed back to Waterloo. Students are
| comparing notes and discussing the contest immediately after the
| contest.
|
| Nonetheless, in my experience (more than 15 years ago), all or
| almost all of the students who make it to the second stage
| deserved to be there. I hope that continues to be true.
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