EDITORS' CORNER
Grading for accuracy incentivizes AI use, professor says
A University of California Berkeley math professor no longer grades his students’ homework, as he believes they are all using artificial intelligence to complete assignments.
Professor Richard Borcherds told The Daily Californian that his students must be using the technology, as too many of them are earning high scores. As a result, he sees “no point” in paying graders.
The professor grades homework solely on completion, so final grades rely mainly on in-person exams. While he acknowledged this is “not a very good system,” he said he doesn’t know of a better solution.
“If AI continues to improve at present rate, then, in a few years, there’ll be nothing human mathematicians can do that AI can’t do better,” Borcherds said.
He also said he doesn’t know whether students should even study in the math department.
“I have no idea what to advise. I even asked ChatGPT this exact question, and even ChatGPT said it didn’t have any idea what was going to happen,” he said.
“There have been plenty of technical breakthroughs in the past — hand weaving was put out of business by looms, and horses were put out of business by motor cars, and so on,” Borcherds said. “This is the first time anything like this has happened in mathematics, though.”
He also told The California Post that grading for accuracy only incentivizes students to use AI instead of working through the problems themselves.
Further, it is becoming harder to detect AI-generated work.
“There is no easy way to tell the difference between human and AI generated work. 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,” he said.
Berkeley requires professors to include their AI protocol in course syllabi. The policies differ widely across course levels and disciplines, Anne Marie Richard, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education, told The Daily Californian.
According to a recent report from the Digital Education Council, almost 90 percent of students use artificial intelligence in their learning, and 77 percent of faculty use AI to help them teach.
A few schools, like the University of Chicago have banned AI use in some classes, The College Fix previously reported.
However, experts disagree on whether AI bans will maintain academic integrity or only cause harm.
In an email to the campus community, Harvard College Dean David Deming wrote that AI bans cannot be enforced, the Harvard Crimson reported.
“Take-home exams and problem sets are no longer a sustainable way to assess mastery, and when coupled with unenforceable AI bans they create a difficult dilemma for students who don’t want to cheat but also fear falling behind to their classmates,” he wrote.
Colorado State University Professor Kyle Saunders agrees, leading him to implement a unique approach to AI in his classroom.
He wrote in a post on X that every assignment in his class is either “AI-encouraged with required disclosure or AI-prohibited (the in-person exams).”
In a recent Substack post, he wrote that he decided to encourage the use of AI for some assignments because a prohibition doesn’t “actually produce a class that isn’t using AI.”
