AI use leads UC Berkeley math professor to see 'no point' in grading homework
UC Berkeley professor Richard Borcherds has stopped grading homework because widespread AI use makes it impossible to verify student effort. He expresses concern that AI advancements may soon render human mathematical work obsolete, leaving him uncertain about how to advise students on their career paths.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing disruption of AI in higher education and the existential questions facing academic disciplines traditionally considered immune to automation.
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.
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