Posted on 10/25/2026 5:09:27 PM PDT by Libloather
A UC Berkeley professor has stopped grading students’ homework for correctness after noticing artificial intelligence tools were helping them rack up top marks.
Richard Borcherds, a renowned mathematician who received the prestigious Fields Medal in 1998, said widespread student use of AI has undermined the value of traditional homework grading.
“Student use of AI for homework is now widespread,” Borcherds told The California Post. “Grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework instead of doing it themselves, and penalizes students for honesty.”
Paying graders to evaluate AI generated answers is also a waste of time and money, he said.
Borcherds now awards credit based primarily on whether students complete their assignments rather than whether their answers are correct, acknowledging that he does not know of a better solution.
The professor said it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish work produced by artificial intelligence from work written by students themselves.
“There is no easy way to tell the difference between human and AI generated work,” he told The California Post. “Occasionally one could tell it is AI because AI made a few characteristic errors, but AI has now improved so much that it rarely makes obvious mistakes.”
His comments come as AI tools grow increasingly capable of tackling complex academic problems, raising questions about how universities will assess students’ work and prepare the next generation of mathematicians.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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The questions need to be reassessed too.
I recall flunking on questions like “Prove that a unique minimax estimator is admissible.” My proofs had too many words and not enough symbols.
I fed that question into AI just now...I would not be surprised if the professor marked the answer wrong (quite a few words) nor would I be surprised if he marked it right.
Well. To be fair. I don’t rely on much of anything I learned in classes in college. Why poke around doing something myself in days what takes AI minutes. And for structural calculations... Same thing. Hand calcs that take all day can be done in minutes and can be verified by another AI agent. AI is out of the bottle. No putting it back in. How many complained when slide rulers were made obsolete by calculators and computers? Hand drafting boards replaced with CAD? MATLab vs graph paper?
I for one welcome our AI overlords.
What happened to the blue book? In class tests only will solve the problem.
So what’s the point of college? If i was a parent paying a ton of money for my kid to go i would be so pissed off. Luckily my kid is learning a trade.
More in-class writing and short exams prior to major exams in a school term. Minimize work to be done out of class and handed in.
AI will improve. Universities will continue to do the opposite.
As my late grandfather was fond of saying, "Can't never could do nothin'!"
/bingo!
Two words, “Blue Books”
So, students outsourced their homework to India.
Related:
"AI Chatbot Turns Out to Be 700 Engineers in India":
https://tech.co/news/ai-startup-chatbot-revealed-as-human-engineers
'Amazon Abandons Checkout-Less Tech That Secretly Used 1,000 Indian Employees Watching Cameras'
https://thedeepdive.ca/amazon-abandons-checkout-less-tech-that-secretly-used-1000-indian-employees-watching-cameras/
"Amazon is doing away with the “Just Walk Out” checkout-less technology at its Fresh grocery stores... Instead of relying solely on artificial intelligence and advanced sensors, as Amazon had claimed, the Just Walk Out system depended heavily on manual labor from over 1,000 workers based in India... These remote “cashiers” monitored video footage from stores to track what items customers removed from shelves before generating receipts hours later."
So just go back to the old-school method of having students sit for 3-hour exams in closed rooms, no notebooks, no cell phones and no computers
what’s old is new again
Blue book quizzes in class will stop this crap quick, fast and in a hurry.
It’s come a long ways since Dr. Sbaitso (SoundBlaster, back in the early ‘90s).
AI is changing everything. Universities must teach Americans how to keep up
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ai-changing-everything-universities-must-teach-americans-keep-up
May point out a fallacy of AI as well. I never thought much of it from the start, but I will admit to not knowing everything about it. It sure seems like a possible reason not to allow them in school at all.
My first thought, as well. This prof is a slacker.
I'm still gnashing over coming in second in a junior high spelling bee because the moderator (the vice principal, who hated me) deliberately mispronounced the word when it was my turn. I even asked her to pronounce it again before answering.
But seriously, that kind of thing wasn't as likely to affect my eventual advancement as yours could have been. I don't even know what field of study your question arose from. I'm guessing some form of math or engineering.
The challenge to society is the use of AI in fields that are not heavily ruled by absolutes the way math is. Which is most fields.
Solution is to base grades on tests taken with a pen or pencil and paper in a classroom with no computer. Small quizzes throughout the year based on assigned reading.
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If they want to give take home homework or exams, I think there is a way to have students in places without internet access for the duration of the task. They need to figure out how to do it.
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