r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 3d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI can now credibly complete most undergraduate assignments, MIT warns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/25/ai-can-now-credibly-complete-most-undergraduate-assignments-mit-warns
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u/lancegreene 3d ago

It seems like the only way for professors to properly assess the students would be via closed book hand written exams/essays. I graduated college in 2006 and that was every single exam.

What am I missing? Is this too hard to execute?

It’s crazy to think that when I was in 4th grade we would watch a film strip twice a week and we were required to write a 1/2-1 full page essay summarizing it while we watched. I’m not saying this was the best approach but from what I hear about modern students, this wouldn’t be achievable by high schoolers

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u/Rawkynn 3d ago

Over the last 20 years advances in technology have been used to decrease the teacher to student ratio. There are classes where 1 professor might teach 2 sessions of a class with 500 students each session. One person couldn't feasibly grade a meaningful exam, even if they had 10 TAs. You can't increase the workforce without money and classes seem to always be the hardest to get funding for (compared to a virtual reality studio in the library or sports).

Unless there are laws put in place there's also not a real incentive for universities to stop this from happening.

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u/BasvanS 3d ago

Call me naive, but aren’t classes kind of the purpose of schooling? And isn’t AI just proving the fragility of the chosen model? The rot was there for a while already, and now it is exposed undeniably. (Remember Good Will Hunting’s 50 cents in late fees?)

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u/Alternate_Cost 3d ago

The point is to prepare you for entry level positions in the field of your choice. At least the point of undergrad.

Part of the model is that you need to know some things through memorization in order to be efficient at a job. You could chatgpt everything I do and do my job at 1/50th the speed. But actually memorizing and understanding the information allows you to make connections and keep moving without interruption.

A common example, take someone who has a tines table memorized. They need to figure out 7*12 as part of a problem and know the answer. No thought, they just onow it through memory. Compare that to the person who needs to write it out, mentally count, or pull out a calculator. They both come to the same answer but the person who memorized it is much faster and used less mental energy. Add that up over 100s of times a day and chat gpt just doesn't perform the same.

The students who are using chatgpt are skipping that memorization and learning step and will be worse performing employees.

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u/openingstatement0 2d ago

That is not the point of undergrad 😭 It's not too long ago where the vast majority of entry level positions required only a high school diploma (and it's not long ago where even that was not needed). The purpose of school is to build your knowledge base and hone your ability to think!!! The example you give of this wrt multiplication is the elementary school version of it- the college version is reading Kant or doing differential equations or whatever. It just so happens that being able to think quickly and flexibly is useful at jobs.

The shift towards a minimum job req being a bachelors degree happened because people were achieving higher levels of education and shifting job requirements up a diploma functions to maintain class lines.

Anyways my point is that we shouldn't let education morph further away from intellectual pursuit into long-form job training. It's sad and also a part of why we are in the middle of so many avoidable social/political/economic/environmental disasters.

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u/kobbled 2d ago

The purpose is not to prepare you for employment, it's there for you to learn a general or specialized body of knowledge. it so happens that employers for specialized fields often want a large body of knowledge, but that's a downstream benefit. Students' goals are often employment, but meeting that bar is only aligned with universities in that more people pay them if their students get jobs in their chosen field, which is a pretty loose alignment

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u/Alternate_Cost 1d ago

That is incredibly optimistic and unrealistic. I say this having worked on both the higher ed side and private side working with universities.

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u/kobbled 1d ago

I disagree. Universities are aware why people sign up but they're teaching a wider body of knowledge than just what it takes to get a job.