April 24, 2026
Oxford exam or philosophy meme pack?
Oxford All Souls College General Examination [pdf]
Oxford’s wildest exam paper sparks AI panic, Greek flexing and ‘just say yes’ memes
TLDR: Oxford’s All Souls College exam went viral for its wild questions about ghosting, sex work and Mars colonies, but the internet fixated on what happens when AI tackles them. Commenters joked, memed, and worried that chatbots might hollow out exams meant to test real human thinking and creativity.
Oxford’s All Souls College just dropped an exam paper that reads like a mix of philosophy TikTok and a very intense group chat: “Defend ghosting,” “Should Job Centres offer sex work?” and even “Write a dialogue between Socrates and Elon Musk.” But online, the real test wasn’t for students – it was for the commenters.
One user stared straight into the AI abyss and asked what happens when you feed these questions into a large language model, warning that while chatbots can spit out slick answers, the whole point is to force humans to actually think. Another chimed in with a grim nostalgia bomb: their university made students hand‑write exams just ten years ago, and they’re now wondering if Oxford is doing the same in the age of ChatGPT.
Others treated the paper like a playground. One commenter answered every yes/no question with a chaotic “yes,” turning philosophy into a meme. Another dropped a line of ancient Greek – “we are all nothing but dust in the wind” – then immediately admitted they don’t even speak Greek, weaponizing fake erudition for laughs. And amid the confusion, one lone hero posted a link explaining that this is all for a super‑elite Oxford fellowship, while everyone else debated whether AI is about to turn humanity’s hardest exam questions into autofill.
Key Points
- •Two All Souls College General Examination papers (General Paper I and II) are presented, each requiring candidates to answer three essay questions.
- •General Paper I contains 27 prompts covering philosophy, ethics, literature, politics, culture, religion, and science/technology themes.
- •General Paper II contains 25 prompts addressing contemporary issues, historiography, law, science funding, literary theory, and AI.
- •Many prompts are framed around quotations from noted figures (e.g., Auden, Blake, Schiller, Skinner, Huxley, Coetzee, Sontag, Benjamin).
- •Topics span from AI (Turing test, style vs AI) and high-energy physics funding to UN rights beyond humans, Mars colony design, and judicial independence.