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Incident 721: Fake AI-Generated Students Are Reportedly Enrolling in Online College Classes

Description: Reportedly, an adjunct professor at an unspecified community college suspects that some students in his online art history and art appreciation courses are AI-powered spambots. These "students" allegedly submit peculiar assignments, such as analyses of non-existent artworks and descriptions of sculptures using painting terminology. Additionally, their engagement with the college portal is minimal. The professor believes the spambot students aim to fraudulently obtain financial aid by remaining enrolled in courses.

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Alleged: Unknown spambot creators and scammers developed an AI system deployed by Fraudsters and Financial aid scammers, which harmed students , Professors , Community colleges and Academic staff.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
721
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-06-04
Editors
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Malicious Actors & Misuse

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident OccurrenceAI spambots invade community college classroom, professor puzzled
AI spambots invade community college classroom, professor puzzled

AI spambots invade community college classroom, professor puzzled

cybernews.com

AI spambots invade community college classroom, professor puzzled
cybernews.com · 2024

One professor believes that some of his students are actually AI-powered spambots designed to steal valuable resources from community colleges.

As reported via Medium, one adjunct faculty instructor at an unknown community college is having…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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