'Humanity has chosen to become idiots': Brown professor discovers mass cheating
A Brown University professor reportedly discovered widespread cheating involving AI, leading him to lament that "humanity has chosen to become idiots," highlighting growing concerns over academic integrity in the age of artificial intelligence.
Background
- Roberto Serrano is a longtime economics professor at Brown University (an Ivy League school in the US). He recently discovered that a large portion of his students were using AI tools to complete take-home exams and assignments in ways that violated his course's academic integrity policy.
- The incident became widely discussed because Serrano publicly expressed frustration, arguing that students are undermining their own education by outsourcing thinking to AI. His quote "Humanity has chosen to become idiots" went viral.
- This is part of a larger ongoing crisis in higher education: since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, professors worldwide have struggled to adapt grading, assignments, and exam formats to prevent AI-generated submissions. Many schools have revised honor codes, but enforcement is difficult.
- The "mass cheating" refers to a specific case where Serrano identified widespread AI use through unusual patterns in student answers, not just a few isolated violations.