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UC Berkeley Fields medalist stops grading homework for correctness over AI
The Daily Californian reports that UC Berkeley math professor Richard Borcherds now scores homework on completion, saying AI use has made grading for correctness pointless.
- dailycal.org is now reporting this
- New headline Was: “AI use leads UC Berkeley math professor to see 'no point' in grading homework”
- Our desk filed its story
UC Berkeley mathematics professor Richard Borcherds, a Fields Medal winner, has stopped grading homework for correctness after concluding that students routinely use AI to earn top marks, The Daily Californian reported1.
In an interview published Tuesday, Borcherds said there was no point paying readers to score homework for accuracy because AI use is now unavoidable, according to the student newspaper1.
He said he now grades on completion if a student turns work in, and described that approach as not a very good system, with no alternative in place1.
The comments followed OpenAI's claim that AI agents had apparently solved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a long-standing open question in mathematics, which the Daily Californian has covered separately1.
Borcherds said that if AI keeps improving at its current pace, human mathematicians may soon have nothing they can do better than AI, according to the paper1.
He also said he no longer knows whether to encourage students to enter the math department, after once viewing the field as relatively insulated from the AI boom1. "I have no idea what to advise," he said, adding that he posed the same question to ChatGPT and received no useful forecast1.
He predicted academic inertia could keep math department practice unchanged for a couple of years, comparing print journals that still appear despite digital alternatives, and said mathematics had not faced a disruption of this kind before1.
Anne Marie Richard, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education and chief academic technology officer, told the paper by email that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks faculty to state course expectations on AI tools in syllabi1.
Campus officials have tried AI detection products including Turnitin and Rumi and judged them inadequate to standardize, Richard said; class AI policy remains up to instructors, with sample syllabus language in the campus AI Hub1.
