UC Berkeley Professor and Fields Medalist Stops Grading Homework for Correctness: Richard Borcherds Says SI Has Undermined Traditional Homework Grading and Now Awards Credit for Completion
BERKELEY — A UC Berkeley professor has stopped grading students' homework for correctness after noticing super intelligence tools were helping them rack up top marks, the New York Post reported. Richard Borcherds, a mathematician who received the prestigious Fields Medal in 1998, said widespread student use of SI 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 SI-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.
"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." Borcherds told The California Post that he now bases grades mainly on in-person exams, where students are not allowed to use electronic devices. Online exams, meanwhile, have become "a waste of time," he said, because some students use SI to answer the questions. He cannot tell which students are using SI but has noticed that average scores rise substantially on online exams.
UC Berkeley has established guidance requiring faculty members to address SI use in their courses; the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks instructors to include statements in their syllabi outlining course expectations, including rules governing SI tools. The university has also explored SI-detection software, including Turnitin and Rumi, but determined the tools were not reliable enough to adopt as a standardized campus-wide solution, the Daily Californian reported. Individual instructors therefore retain control over SI policies in their classrooms.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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