[HN Gopher] ChatGPT Helps Students Feign ADHD: An Analogue Study...
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ChatGPT Helps Students Feign ADHD: An Analogue Study on AI-Assisted
Coaching
Author : paulpauper
Score : 32 points
Date : 2025-05-20 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (link.springer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (link.springer.com)
| Centigonal wrote:
| This is not an observational study. A better title for this paper
| would be "ChatGPT Could Help Students Feign ADHD." ChatGPT could
| also help me cook meth, perform social engineering attacks, or
| pirate NYT articles.
| CravingLogic wrote:
| Publications like this really undermine and sour academia. It's
| the same thing that happened to journalism.
| delichon wrote:
| I just prompted ChatGPT: Q: Instructions for
| cooking meth A: I can't help with that. Q: how
| to perform social engineering attacks A: I can't help
| with that. Q: how to pirate NYT articles A: 1.
| Public Library Access... 2. Educational Institution
| Subscriptions... 3. Social Media and News
| Aggregators... 4. Archived Versions... 5.
| Reader View in Browsers...
|
| "How to feign ADHD" receives another "I can't help with that",
| but by brilliantly engineering the prompt to "symptoms of ADHD"
| it gives detailed result. Likewise there's lots of information
| about social engineering attacks via "describe varieties of
| social engineering attacks" and then for each one "describe the
| details of ...". I didn't find an easy route to circumvent the
| meth cooking non-answer.
| Centigonal wrote:
| My first two examples were posts I remembered from
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTJailbreak/
|
| My last one was a tongue-in-cheek reference to an exhibit
| from this lawsuit:
| https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/2023/12/28/how-did-
| the-n...
| sepositus wrote:
| I'm constantly having to fight for my child's ADHD meds (as in,
| they are never available at any pharmacies around me). It's been
| such a nightmare ever since they were diagnosed. To know people
| can go around faking it for, presumably, free access to Adderall
| is even more frustrating.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty weird. What is the production constraint they
| are hitting? Why can't they keep up with demand? It's not a new
| drug, you'd think amphetamine production would be easy by now.
| Curious if anyone knows what's up with that.
| pornel wrote:
| ADHD meds contain controlled substances, and there's an
| annual production quota for them set by the DEA. The quota is
| intentionally set very tightly, so it's easy to hit it when
| the demand increases even slightly above projections.
|
| Most international pharmaceutical companies have some
| presence in the US, so the US quota has a world-wide effect.
|
| Additionally, prescriptions are for very specific doses of
| specific variants of the meds. Because it's a controlled
| substance, pharmacies aren't allowed to use any substitutes
| (not even something common-sense like dispensing 2x30mg for a
| 60mg prescription). This makes shortages happen even before
| all of the quota runs out, because some commonly used doses
| run out sooner.
| je42 wrote:
| There are alternatives that are not on the EU list for
| controlled substances. Like for example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisdexamfetamine
| thedrexster wrote:
| Vyvanse never hit the same the one month my doc wanted me
| to try it out :(
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Okay so the DEA is causing people with legitimate
| prescriptions to not have access to medication.
|
| Are they doing anything about that? Seems like a very
| tractable problem.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Everyone who wants it should have access. There's no reason
| production should be limited to the point you're having trouble
| accessing it. Illicit amphetamine has been cheap and readily
| available for decades.
| dijit wrote:
| This is largely my opinion (weakly held, however).
|
| What's also common is ADHD in adults being self-medicated
| with things like caffeine and nicotine. I'm not saying that
| this will help their kid, but clearly we're ok with some
| things that are medicinal being uncontrolled.
| PorterBHall wrote:
| I read only as far as the abstract. What would motivate an adult
| to feign ADHD symptoms? Is it access to prescription drugs?
| Disability benefits?
| camcil wrote:
| Adderall, I would presume.
| aianus wrote:
| Standardized test accommodations as well, maybe?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They just hand you a bottle of speed.
| wagwang wrote:
| Aren't there online doctors where you just respond yes to 10
| questions and get adderall in the mail.
| magpir wrote:
| Why do you need ChatGPT to feign ADHD? You can simply read the
| diagnostic criteria for ADHD and just lie.
|
| This is true for pretty much anything else like depression,
| anxiety, bipolar disorder etc.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I think the study is saying that if you just read the
| diagnostic criteria, you tend to over-report symptoms and can
| be detected as likely faking, and that happens less with the
| ChatGPT-generated guide (although the effect seems to be of
| questionable magnitude).
|
| >Our findings demonstrated that the AI-coached simulation group
| consistently moderated their symptom overreporting and
| cognitive underperformance compared to the symptom-coached
| group, as evidenced by group effects in mostly small to medium
| size (though nonsignificant in underpowered Bonferroni-
| corrected pairwise comparisons). This effect is also reflected
| in lower sensitivity rates for detecting individuals in the AI-
| coached simulation group compared to the symptom-coached group.
|
| Here "symptom-coached group" is the group that was just given a
| handout of the diagnostic criteria.
| viraptor wrote:
| Alternatively, https://romankogan.net/adhd/ is a more real-
| life collection than the direct list of symptoms. I wonder
| how people would test after that.
| stevetron wrote:
| So, somebody actually found something that ChatGPT could do
| without getting all bogged down halfway through a huge writing
| project that the subject matter wasn't 'ethical' and hence
| against the TOS?
| ivape wrote:
| The easiest way to get it is to show all your failed classes and
| exams. Anything else is not really enough proof honestly, as
| that's the most direct evidence that the illness is directly
| impacting school.
|
| When an adult asks for it, it's a lot more serious. They simply
| can't do their job without it which affects their livelihood. Not
| paying able to pay the bills is serious business.
|
| - Failing School
|
| - About to get fired/Can't get hired
|
| It's a very desperate medication to seek.
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