Richard Borcherds, a UC Berkeley professor and Fields medalist, no longer grades his students’ homework.
After seeing how many of his students used AI to consistently receive top scores, he felt there was “no point” in paying readers to grade for correctness in homework, as AI use is now unavoidable.
Borcherds revealed this in a sit-down interview Tuesday, following OpenAI’s announcement that AI agents apparently solved one of mathematics’ most difficult unsolved problems, the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem.
“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.
Borcherds said he currently grades on completion if a student hands in their homework. He admitted that it is “not a very good system,” but at the moment, he has no alternative.
Borcherds stated he no longer knows whether to encourage students to go into the math department, as it seemed five years ago that being a mathematician was one of the safest careers from the AI boom.
“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,” Borcherds said.
He described a plentiful amount of “inertia” in the academic system and said he wouldn’t be surprised if things stayed the same in the math department for a couple years despite AI developments.
He drew a comparison to physical paper journals, which publish even though they have been “utterly pointless” for two decades.
“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.”
The Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks that faculty include a statement about course expectations including the use of AI tools for coursework in course syllabi, according to an email from Anne Marie Richard, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education and chief academic technology officer. However, she said the direct policies on AI use can vary dramatically with course level and focus area.
Campus has tried several AI detection tools, including Turnitin and Rumi, but have determined that these tools aren’t adequate enough to be standardized on campus.
AI policy for classes is up to the discretion of faculty, but there is a growing database of sample AI use statements available in the AI Hub, the campus directory for AI tools, training and policies, for faculty to use in their syllabi, according to Richard.