This chart should be a 'wake-up call' about AI cheating, Brown University professor says

Brown University professor Roberto Serrano told Business Insider that the "cost of cheating has basically gone down to zero."

Roberto Serrano

Roberto Serrano's class scored curiously well on the take-home midterm exam. When he suspected widespread AI cheating and made their final exam in-person, their grades tanked.The Brown University professor teaches welfare economics and social choice theory. The midterm was administered from home after a shooter killed two students in December."The problem with this technology is that the cost of cheating has basically gone down to zero," he told Business Insider. "It's very easy for students to succumb to the temptation."When he told students that the final exam would be in person, many previously high-scoring students dropped out. Others who scored in the high 90s on the midterm scored in the 50s on the final.A chart of the data, which was first publicized by Inside Higher Ed, shows each student's grades:Brian E. Clark, Brown's VP for news and strategic campus communications, wrote to Business Insider that Serrano shared details with the university's standing committee on the academic code on July 8. The committee "move forward according to its procedures.""Brown treats every allegation of academic integrity with the utmost seriousness," Clark wrote.