{"slug": "brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam", "title": "Brown Professor Alleges AI-Assisted Mass Cheating in Exam", "summary": "Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano alleges that 40 of 86 students in his ECON 1170 class cheated on a take-home midterm using ChatGPT, after scores averaged 96%. Following an in-person final, the average dropped to 48% and 19 students failed, prompting discussions about AI's impact on academic integrity.", "body_md": "For AI practitioners and educators, the Brown incident highlights how accessible generative models can undermine take-home assessments and push institutions toward supervised or redesigned evaluation strategies. According to reporting by Inside Higher Ed, Fortune, Ars Technica and other outlets, Brown economics professor Roberto Serrano gave a take-home midterm to his ECON 1170 class after a December campus shooting; the midterm produced an average score of **96 percent**, with **40** of **86** students earning perfect or nearly perfect marks (Inside Higher Ed, Fortune). Inside Higher Ed and Ars Technica reported that Serrano and his graders compared student answers with outputs from `ChatGPT`, finding similar wording and reasoning. After Serrano announced an in-person final, several students dropped the course, and reporting shows the final average fell to roughly **48 percent** with **19** students failing (Ars Technica, Inside Higher Ed). Multiple outlets characterized the case as a large-scale AI-assisted cheating incident in the Ivy League (Fortune, Futurism).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam", "canonical_source": "https://letsdatascience.com/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam-e33f4114", "published_at": "2026-07-09 15:27:11+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-09 16:11:24.613615+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy", "large-language-models"], "entities": ["Brown University", "Roberto Serrano", "ChatGPT", "Inside Higher Ed", "Fortune", "Ars Technica", "Futurism"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/brown-professor-alleges-ai-assisted-mass-cheating-in-exam.jsonld"}}