Episode 22 · 2 August 2026 · 47 min

You Don't Have an AI-Proof Task, You Have a Lack of Imagination | Phill Dawson

Artwork for You Don't Have an AI-Proof Task, You Have a Lack of Imagination | Phill Dawson

Chapters

  1. Drawing the owl problem
  2. From robotics to assessment
  3. No AI-proof task exists
  4. Seven million glasses sold
  5. Separability and observability defined
  6. Pricing the Faraday cage
  7. Cheating was never the goal
  8. Layering the Swiss cheese
  9. Students misremembering their own authorship

Show notes

Professor Phill Dawson quite literally wrote the book on assessment security, and thinks the approach has a single-digit number of years left. The CRADLE co-director joins Adjunct Intelligence to explain why wearable AI breaks the two assumptions invigilated exams and interactive orals quietly depend on: that a student can be separated from AI, and that someone will notice if they aren't. Seven million AI glasses sold last year and almost nobody can pick them out of a crowd. Also covered: why stopping cheating was never the point, what the Swiss cheese model actually asks of assessment design, and why declaration policy is on shaky ground.

[00:00] — Drawing the owl problem
[01:53] — From robotics to assessment
[03:28] — No AI-proof task exists
[05:28] — Seven million glasses sold
[07:45] — Separability and observability defined
[09:31] — Pricing the Faraday cage
[15:25] — Cheating was never the goal
[19:56] — Layering the Swiss cheese
[35:11] — Students misremembering their own authorship
[42:01] — Coffee vouchers over frameworks


Want to find out more about Phill: https://philldawson.com/

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