When AI creates a new cheating pandemic

That remark from a veteran adviser who has long left the lectern reflects a troubling reality: a "cheating pandemic" is spreading through classrooms from East to West.

At an early-2026 meeting, student representatives at my university raised concerns about the widespread misuse of AI in practice quizzes. These quizzes do not count toward final grades; they exist solely to help students review material. Yet many students still rely on AI to complete them. One representative noted that some classmates rarely attend lectures and barely understand the content, yet routinely score 80-90% on quizzes. The result is quiet resentment among diligent students, many of whom eventually feel pressured to join the same race and use AI simply to remain competitive.

A person is using ChatGPT on their laptop. Photo by Pexels

The issue extends far beyond exams or grades. Artificial intelligence has dramatically reduced the cost of cheating to its lowest level in history, even as it boosts productivity worldwide.

In Vietnam and elsewhere, essay-writing mills have evolved into professionalized firms offering full-service packages, from high school assignments to final theses at elite universities in the U.K. and the U.S. Online groups that teach students how to cheat flourish on social media, rivaling stock-picking forums in scale and activity.

As a result, individuals can now purchase a "polished profile" with money and algorithms rather than build it through sustained effort. Some describe this as the age of the "easy-living student," and society will bear the consequences.

The most serious damage lies in the erosion of quality and integrity in the future workforce. Students who depend on AI shortcuts often fail to realize that machine-generated output rarely delivers complete understanding. It does not become internalized knowledge. When these individuals confront clients or complex real-world problems, that intellectual emptiness becomes evident.

So-called "AI accidents" have already produced tangible losses. Recently, Deloitte, one of the Big Four audit firms, refunded part of a 440,000 Australian dollar contract (about US$290,000) after the Australian government found that staff had used AI to generate reports. While the financial cost mattered, the reputational damage was far greater. Only after such incidents do organizations begin to grasp the true price of AI-enabled shortcuts.

In response, major institutions are reversing course. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has suspended online exams since March and returned to in-person testing. A postgraduate program in Scotland, where I serve as an independent examiner, now requires oral defenses to verify that students genuinely understand their theses. These steps represent a costly and uncomfortable retreat, but a necessary one. Universities now spend significantly more on proctoring tools, eye-tracking systems, and human oversight simply to maintain a basic level of academic honesty.

Even these measures face resistance. In the U.K., some students exploit welfare or accommodation rules to avoid in-person exams, often citing psychological stress. Others crowd into electives that lack supervised assessments. Some pursue medical notes or letters from former lecturers to bypass any evaluation involving direct human scrutiny.

Yet the most troubling issue is not technological. It is ethical. Who will trust future accountants, auditors, or financial advisers if they learned to deceive systems from their earliest days in education?

Equally pressing is the question facing honest students. As one representative put it, "Why should I try to excel when my results always trail those who cheat?" Without a credible answer, integrity risks becoming a disadvantage rather than a virtue.

AI cannot be banned. It represents progress and an irreversible trend. But neither can education be allowed to devolve into a factory producing hollow credentials. Failure to confront this "pandemic" risks eroding not only academic standards, but also the moral foundations of a transparent society.

Geoffrey Hinton, often described as the father of modern AI and a co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, has observed that humanity has no experience living in a world where AI exists. That reality demands that we learn, collectively, how to coexist with it.

For now, the return to in-person exams and oral defenses, as seen at ACCA and the Scottish university, remains a temporary compromise. Some institutions pursue technical solutions, such as locked-down virtual environments that restrict AI access. Others advocate for educational models that emphasize learning for its own sake rather than gaming the system.

The cheating pandemic emerged because AI dramatically lowered the cost of dishonesty. Most responses seek to raise that cost again--through money, time, and ethical pressure. Which approach will prevail remains to be seen.