Episode 22 · 2 August 2026 · 47 min
You Don't Have an AI-Proof Task, You Have a Lack of Imagination | Phill Dawson

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Chapters
- Drawing the owl problem
- From robotics to assessment
- No AI-proof task exists
- Seven million glasses sold
- Separability and observability defined
- Pricing the Faraday cage
- Cheating was never the goal
- Layering the Swiss cheese
- 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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