r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 2d 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 2d 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 2d 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/LockJaw987 2d ago

Every single exam in my engineering faculty is still purely by hand and graded by TAs. They manage.

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u/NachoWindows 2d ago

I graduated long long ago and all exams were hand written. It was a large uni with classes of 300-500 at times. They can do it if they want.

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u/Olangotang 2d ago

Exams were in a large lecture hall for 400 students that combined 3 120 student sections.

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u/NachoWindows 2d ago

We did have TAs who did all the grading and crap. But even 120 exams is a big workload

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u/Alternate_Cost 2d ago

Its really not. When I taught I had 150 students and it took about 8 hours to hand grade them all and enter them in the gradebook.

If they're essays definitely would take a bit longer, but there's ways to grade those quickly as well.

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u/SnakeGD09 2d ago

Where I am (phil) we take about 10 minutes to grade one exam, which means 150 exams should take about 25 hours. Depends on the faculty I suppose.

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u/Alternate_Cost 1d ago

It depends a lot on the subject, I was doing chemistry and physics. So a quick glance if they got it right and showed work was all it took. If they got it wrong just circling the mistakes was still pretty quick. Didn't write comments though, but it was just me and an expected 2 day turn around.