Renowned college professor refuses to grade students' homework after spotting a worrying trend
A veteran college professor has decided to stop making corrections to his pupils' work due to artificial intelligence.
While there are certainly benefits to chat bots such as ChatGPT, many educational institutions worry their frequent use could be used to assist students with cheating.
Of course, universities can invest in technology to pick up whether a student has used AI to write an essay, though it can not always be so simple to pick up on the use of such tools.
Richard Borcherds, a UC Berkeley professor, has noticed AI tools has enabled his students to rack up top marks, which he believes has undermined the value of traditional homework grading.
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Speaking to the California Post recently, the mathematician said: "Student use of AI for homework is now widespread. 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."
The professor noted how difficult it can be to distinguish work produced by the students themselves and that written by AI.
He continued: "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."
The rise of AI has even seen Borcherds question whether aspiring mathematicians should pursue a career in the field.
He discussed such in the Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s student newspaper.
"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 told the paper.
"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."
The professor worries that the world of math will be left behind with the rise of AI, though did note that academic journals continued to be updated despite the advancements in technology across the world.
"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," he added.
"This is the first time anything like this has happened in mathematics, though."
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Education
Callum Jones