Prof. Robert Serrano, who has been teaching in Brown University’s Economics Department for 34 years, is sounding off in horror about the scourge of artificial intelligence being used by students to cheat. He apparently missed the last two years.

Serrano had allowed the class in Econ 1170, an advanced course he has been teaching for many years, to take the mid-term exam at home. He was shocked—shocked!—that a large number of his students apparently cheated and used ChatGPT to do it. The grades for a midterm exam were not only significantly higher than in previous years, but a review of the answers submitted found that many responses were identical to those the bot came up with. Not only that, but when Serrano told the class that they could keep the midterm grade they received but that the final would be taken in an exam room with a monitor, nearly a third of the class , 27 out of 86, dropped out. Coincidentally, most the drop-outs had scored 100 on the mid-term.

This was sufficient evidence for the professor to conclude that his students had cheated on the test. No shit, Sherlock.

“This is a very challenging course that attracts typically very strong students, and in the past, the average grade for the midterm ranged from 65 to 80,” says Serrano. “The average this time was 96.” He also saw a huge increase in enrollments in his class this year. “In past editions of the course, the enrollments were at most 30, as low as 8 one semester,” he says. “This semester it jumped to 86. Perhaps many of them saw that this exam would be take-home.”

Ya think?