UC Berkeley professor refuses to grade his students homework after noticing worrying trend: No point

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, said he no longer sees the value in paying graders to evaluate whether students’ homework answers are correct when AI can increasingly do the work for them.The professor’s comments come after OpenAI’s announcement that its AI agents had apparently solved the notoriously difficult Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of mathematics’ major unsolved challenges.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story “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 Daily Californian, Berkeley’s student newspaper.Borcherds, who received the prestigious Fields Medal in 1998 for his contributions to mathematics, said he now awards credit based on whether students complete their assignments rather than whether their answers are right.He acknowledged that the approach falls short of an ideal grading system but said he currently has few alternatives.The shift highlights the growing challenges universities face as students gain access to AI systems capable of tackling increasingly sophisticated academic work.Borcherds also expressed uncertainty about whether aspiring mathematicians should still pursue the field, saying that, just five years ago, mathematics appeared to offer relatively strong protection against the disruption now sweeping through other professions.“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 told the paper.

The professor sug...