MIT panel: AI can now do almost any undergrad assignment, urges oral exams
An MIT committee co-chaired by Eric Klopfer and Samuel Madden says AI can credibly complete nearly all coursework, pushing schools toward oral exams and process portfolios instead of detection software.
What to know
- MIT's committee concluded AI can already produce credible answers to almost any undergraduate assignment, calling into question take-home work as a way to verify learning.
- Recommendations favor oral exams, process portfolios, and course-specific policies over AI-detection software, which the committee views as unreliable.
- The report's reach on Reddit sparked a secondary controversy: many commenters noted the article summarizing it appeared to be AI-written itself.
- Debate remains open on whether oral exams meaningfully solve the problem versus simply shifting it, and how much homework should count toward grades going forward.
The dispute Whether oral exams are a genuinely better fix for AI-assisted cheating or just one of several equally valid supervised, in-person formats. · positions read across 107 posts and comments
The coverage article itself appears to be AI-generated, which is ironic given its subject.
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“Absolutely wild to live in the future where AI can do anyone's homework and the news telling me about it is also written by AI.”
u/redtortuga19 · reddit ↗
Homework should stop counting toward grades and testing should move fully in-person; homework was already just practice.
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“Homework is obsolete. In-person tests is the way to go”
u/spacestationkru · reddit ↗
Oral exams aren't clearly better than other supervised, in-person testing formats already in use (like blue books).
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“Process portfolios, yes. But oral exams? I don't understand how that is any better than any other form of in-person and supervised exam.”
u/fmfbrestel · reddit ↗
Making homework optional will backfire for students who rely on it to prepare for and pass tests.
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“I think the problem will be that a lot of college students will ignore homework and then fail the test. Making homework count towards your grade helps prevent students from shooting themself in the foot.”
u/retief1 · reddit ↗
“That's not a cheating problem. That's the entire assessment architecture of a university sitting exposed.”
gadgetreview.com article, article text · gadgetreview.com · Aug 24
Eric Klopfer Co-chair, MIT Ad Hoc Committee on AI UseSamuel Madden Co-chair, MIT Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use
Sally Kornbluth MIT President
The record 2 articles and posts · last 22 days
What people are saying 24 voices from 1 site · best of 107 · verbatim
- How would oral exams scale for large introductory courses?
- Should homework count toward grades at all if it can no longer verify learning?
- Does the shift away from take-home work apply equally to non-STEM fields like philosophy and history, where grading is already essay- and participation-based?
- Sep 3
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Holy shit, the rare "Not X, but (not X, but Y)" construction!
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Jesus Christ. These clickbait articles and comments from people who haven't been to a college this century. Firstly the "problem" isn't an AI problem. You could do this before AI. There are entire free websites with exam answers for every exam imaginable. There are YouTube videos for lab assignments. Cliffs Notes has existed for decades. Homework…
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I studied philosophy and history in college. These subjects are not based on tests, especially at the higher levels. Grades are based on what you contribute to the class, and on analytical papers you write (often with a 15+ page paper due at the end). Having an in-class test with short answers like “What did Schopenhauer think about music” isn’t…
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> Why does that even matter? I never got grades for my homework at university. Because some people do get grades for their homework at university. Consider programming. It is an useful skill to be able to construct a complete, working, professionalish app - but that's not something that can be done during a couple of hours of exam time. The…
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“detection” tools are garbage, we should absolutely roll back to oral and written exams
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What survives this paradigm shift is the reality that oral exams are the only truly fair way to assess student learning.
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Homework should be about practice anyway, not demonstration of competence. As long as tests are in person, it’s up to the student to do the work. (Or the parent to force the student to do the work in younger students). I barely ever did homework in high school, and in college I learned to do extra work with sample tests and answer keys to make…
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Sorry maybe I'm dumb, what is a blue book?
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Not arguing the substance since you can source it all, but this article is obviously written by AI: “That framing matters. She’s not describing a policy gap. She’s describing something closer to what Napster did to the music industry — not a distribution headache, but a fundamental challenge to what the entire model was built on.”
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yep, this was the only solution. glad the universities are coming to their senses rather than lose an AI arms war using detection software
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This; at this point college isn’t about preparing people for their fields, it’s about literally forcing them by chokehold to use their brains and “critical think”. It’s sad but it’s the truth, it’s the only way we can hope for a better future.
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I honestly quite enjoyed taking oral exams during my master's (CS). You could really show a professor that you understood the core concepts without any fear of running out of time or misreading a question. I also got to sit in a few oral exams as a PhD taking minutes and felt it was quite fair method of testing students abilities.
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I graduated from university recently and most of my classes were like 0-10% of the grade from homework, then the rest from in-person exams. Definitely made it harder for people to use LLMs to pass.
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People focused on the dashes for a long time but it’s the dam bold text that’s so easy to spot and also so annoying when I use it
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Last I checked, AI can't write in a blue book. That's how I had to write my essays. There are many easy ways to discourage students from using AI to circumvent their own actual learning.
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You're absolutely right to push back on this
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Well yeah. Homework is just your professor telling you exactly what to focus on the most for studying... I never got grades for homework in college. It was just practice for tests
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This is real talk. It’s like professors/teachers never went through something similar when calculators first came out. Technology changes, not helpful to trip out but instead change with the change.
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“The committee found that generative AI can credibly address almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum, leaving very little standard coursework outside its reach. **That’s not a cheating problem. That’s the entire assessment architecture of a university sitting exposed**.” Absolutely wild to live in the future where AI can do…
- Sep 2
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Homework is obsolete. In-person tests is the way to go
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The benefit of homework assignments is also to impart time management skills You said you spent stressful nights trying to cram homework in. Everyone has to go through stressful times. It’s a part of life. Going through the rigmarole teaches you things like you have two tests next week but also this and that due, what’s the appropriate amount of…
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Process portfolios, yes. But oral exams? I don't understand how that is any better than any other form of in-person and supervised exam. No remote testing solves a huge portion of the problem. Being a little smarter about what kind of homework you assign solves the rest.
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I think the problem will be that a lot of college students will ignore homework and then fail the test. Making homework count towards your grade helps prevent students from shooting themself in the foot. It also means that one bad day will have a smaller impact on your final grade, because underperforming on your test can be offset by consistently…
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Way before this even existed, my math classes stopped counting homework exercises for grades starting in high school. It felt like a relief for all homework haters. Teachers still assign pages from the textbook after every class but it is optional. In elementary school, students get graded for math homework and it counted towards a portion of the…