There’s a Huge Demand For AI Cheating Apps Because They Work
Blame a growing lazy reliance on technology
It’s gonna sound like I’m defending the use of AI to cheat at everything.
Because I am.
See, when I first started working with automation and AI some 15 years ago, I knew there would come a day when people would use AI to “cheat the system.”
Because let’s all be honest here, that’s exactly what AI is for.
That statement may sound controversial, but it’s actually true of any kind of technical evolution. You use tech because it gives you an edge. If it doesn’t, it’s just shitty tech. This is true whether the tech is a workout tracking app or stock market analyzing software or an LLM trained to give the user the best answers to job interview questions or college exams.
Now that AI cheating is rampant in education and cheating apps are being packaged and sold by VC-funded startups, there’s a lot of discussion about the lapse of ethics in AI. And of course, some of that concern is more than warranted.
But any good entrepreneur or business leader should be asking why those ethics are being tested in the first place.
That’s where we need to attack. Let’s break it down.
Columbia Suspends Student For a Different Kind of Cheating
By now you’ve probably heard of Cluely. Here’s a brief backstory. A 21-year-old student at Columbia got suspended for developing an app that he used to cheat during job interviews. He says he landed at least one internship using the app, but didn’t accept the job offer.
Instead, the student raised $5.3 million from legit VCs for straight-faced selling cheating as a service (CaaS?). His startup “offers its users the chance to ‘cheat’ on things like exams, sales calls, and job interviews thanks to a hidden in-browser window that can’t be viewed by the interviewer or test giver.”
Then a reporter from the Verge tried the app in real time with the founder and it didn’t work well and so the reporter tore it to shreds. So yeah, the app is broken and the founder has been bold-faced about “cheating all the time everywhere.”
So, you know, let’s get him.
But I think that misses the point. Entirely. The dad in me says, “Cheating isn’t right!” The human in me says, “Cheating isn’t fair!” The entrepreneur in me says “Why is cheating even possible in these situations?”
That’s Not AI’s Fault
It’s not even a new problem.
When I was in college, there was a course taught by a professor who allowed the students to use their books during the exam. Open book. No big deal, right?
I did not get this professor for this class. But I got one of “his books.”
See, this professor got lazy, and eventually started using the same pool of questions for his exams. Not long after, the students figured this out and started copying the questions and answers straight into the textbooks. Those textbooks were then sold used and bought used, and a new generation of students came into his class on the first day with the answers to all his exams neatly written out in the textbooks they had just purchased.
Is Coasting Ethical?
We all use technology to gain advantages at the margins by exploiting weaknesses in the system. All of us. So let me bring the college test problem back to 2025.
What if, today, that same professor was using AI to prepare his lectures, using AI to generate new and unique questions for his exams, and using AI to grade the exams?
Is that ethical? Is it even teaching?
It certainly doesn’t sound far-fetched.
If you weren’t aware, the vast majority of college kids have been using AI for help with tests and papers for years now. This MSN article, in discussing the same AI-Cheat-At-Everything guys, also mentions a survey of 1000 college students that found that in January 2023, over two years ago, 90% of them were already using ChatGPT for help with homework assignments.
Do you think that number has gone down in two years? Or up?
Oh, also from the same MSN article, “Still, while professors may think they are good at detecting AI-generated writing, studies have found they’re actually not.”
“It’s fine. No need to change the program. We got this.”
When the status quo is defended like that, the ethical question is no longer: Would you use AI to cheat on homework, tests, and papers? It becomes: Are you going to be the only student in the class not using AI on homework, tests, and papers?
Is all that work still graded on a curve? How’s that “C-” taste? Honorable?
Technology Is a Forcing Function
I got a “B” in that professor’s class. That’s not important for any other reason than — remember — I had the magic cheat book, which didn’t help me at all because my professor didn’t allow open book.
Meh. I learned a ton in that class and I enjoyed it. I earned that “B”.
In 2025, there is no level of digital or even physical precaution that isn’t going to eventually be susceptible to some form of mass-adopted digital cheating. I’m not here to solve that. I’m not here to debate ethics or eliminate cheating. I’m here to again point out that the more we lazily lean into technology to quantify merit, the more we realize all exams will eventually have to be face-to-face, one-on-one, oral, in a clean room, with no devices or eyeglasses, and with your hands clearly visible at all times.
That same exact scenario happened in Back To School. Which came out in 1985. For you kids, let me assure you, there was no AI back then, there was just Rodney Dangerfield.
AI is here. So we can do the clean room thing, or we could just measure merit another way.
In college this is difficult, and I empathize. In business, whether it’s interviews or sales calls or leadership meetings, we need to realize that AI becomes a cheating tool first and most quickly for those lazy processes where it can exploit weaknesses.
Eliminate those lazy processes and weaknesses and you eliminate the demand for AI cheating apps.
I promise that none of this was written using any form of AI, so please join my email list and go full human.
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