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Facepalm: The endemic scale of AI-assisted cheating among students over the past few years is well documented, but few visual representations illustrate the problem as well as a recent chart from a Brown University professor. As concerning as the graph is, the university's muted response to it is potentially even more worrying.
When Brown University economics professor Robert Serrano suspected that most of his students had used AI to cheat on a take-home midterm exam, he decided to compare their scores with those from an in-person final. The result was perhaps one of the clearest examples of generative AI's effect on academia.
The reason Serrano allowed the take-home midterms is both reasonable and a sobering sign of the world American students currently inhabit: Some students were uncomfortable taking exams in class after a gunman killed two students and injured nine others at the university last December.
