“We cannot choose to become idiots”: The AI cheating scandal roiling Brown University

“我们不能选择变蠢”：布朗大学深陷人工智能作弊丑闻

Ivy League college students are, by definition, intelligent. They don’t need to use generative AI to cheat on exams; they could just learn the material. But they also tend to be competitive, ambitious, and overscheduled, so AI can look like an easy shortcut that makes more time in their lives for things that can’t be done by a chatbot. When the pressure is on, which approach do they choose? A new scandal at Brown University reveals that huge numbers of these students are likely to cheat.

常春藤盟校的学生从定义上讲都是聪明的。他们本不需要利用生成式人工智能在考试中作弊；他们完全可以掌握学习内容。但他们往往竞争心强、雄心勃勃且日程排得过满，因此人工智能看起来像是一条捷径，能为他们腾出更多时间去做那些聊天机器人无法完成的事情。当压力来临时，他们会选择哪种方式？布朗大学最近的一起丑闻揭示，这些学生中有很大一部分人很可能会选择作弊。

Record scores

创纪录的分数

A recent survey of Princeton students found that 29.9 percent admitted to cheating with AI on at least one exam or assignment. But the recent situation at Brown gives us a better sense of what this kind of cheating looks like in one particular class—and just how much it may be substituting for actual learning. And we know all this because the blind economics professor at the center of it all, Roberto Serrano, is not letting it go.

最近一项针对普林斯顿大学学生的调查发现，29.9%的学生承认在至少一次考试或作业中利用人工智能作弊。但布朗大学最近的情况让我们更清楚地看到了这种作弊在特定课程中是如何表现的，以及它在多大程度上取代了真正的学习。我们之所以了解这一切，是因为处于风暴中心的盲人经济学教授罗伯托·塞拉诺（Roberto Serrano）并没有打算就此罢休。

In just the last week, Serrano—who was born in Spain—has told his story to El País and Inside Higher Ed, which have both run significant pieces on the scandal. The story that Serrano told them begins in December 2025, when a gunman attacked Brown’s campus and killed two people, including one who had recently introduced herself to Serrano.

就在过去一周，出生于西班牙的塞拉诺向《国家报》（El País）和《高等教育内参》（Inside Higher Ed）讲述了他的经历，这两家媒体都对这起丑闻进行了深度报道。塞拉诺讲述的故事始于2025年12月，当时一名枪手袭击了布朗大学校园并杀害了两人，其中一人此前刚向塞拉诺做过自我介绍。

Shaken by the experience, Serrano decided that his spring 2026 section of the quite difficult ECON 1170 would allow take-home exams for both the midterm and the final. Suddenly, the course received an influx of students. El País has the story: The course… typically attracts few students, but very good ones. [Serrano] has never had more than 30 students enrolled at a time, and on some occasions he had only eight. This semester, probably because of the new evaluation system, 86 students signed up for the class.

受此事件影响，塞拉诺决定在他2026年春季开设的难度颇高的“ECON 1170”课程中，期中和期末考试均采用带回家的开卷形式。突然间，这门课涌入了大量学生。《国家报》报道称：这门课……通常选修人数很少，但学生素质很高。[塞拉诺]以往每学期选课人数从未超过30人，有时甚至只有8人。而本学期，可能是因为新的评估制度，有86名学生报名参加了这门课。

The results of the midterm exam, which was administered on March 5, were extraordinary, with an average score of 96 out of 100. Forty students scored a perfect 100. This was indeed extraordinary, because as Serrano told Inside Higher Ed, “Historically the average grade in the midterm of this course has ranged between 65 and 80 [percent], and this exam was harder than the exams I wrote in the past, because… take-home is an opportunity to challenge the class a little bit more, given that you’re giving the students unlimited time.”

3月5日进行的期中考试结果令人震惊，平均分高达96分（满分100分）。有40名学生获得了满分。这确实非同寻常，正如塞拉诺告诉《高等教育内参》的那样：“从历史上看，这门课期中考试的平均分通常在65到80分之间，而且这次考试比我过去出的题目更难，因为……既然给了学生无限的时间，带回家考试就是一个挑战班级的机会。”

Beyond the numbers, many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off. They had a “very convoluted style,” Serrano said. When he and his grad students ran the exam questions through ChatGPT, they received similar results. A suspicious Serrano decided that he would make the final exam in-person; he would see if students did similarly well on it.

除了分数之外，许多答案即使正确，也让人感觉有些不对劲。塞拉诺说，这些答案有一种“非常晦涩的风格”。当他和研究生将考题输入ChatGPT时，得到了类似的结果。心生怀疑的塞拉诺决定将期末考试改为线下进行；他想看看学生们是否能在考试中取得同样好的成绩。

He emailed his class, telling them, “I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong. That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly.”

他给全班发了邮件，告知他们：“我目前不会宣布（期中考试）作废。我打算给班级一个证明我错了的机会。也就是说，如果期末考试的成绩分布与期中考试大致相似，我就会承认期中考试的成绩。否则——当然这也是我预料会发生的情况——我将宣布期中考试作废，并相应地重新调整期末考试的权重。”

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.” Among those who took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48.

18名学生突然退课，另有9人甚至没有参加期末考试。据《国家报》指出，在这27名学生中，“有22人在期中考试中获得了满分”。而在参加考试的学生中，平均分从96分暴跌至48分。

A failed society?

一个失败的社会？

The professor was horrified by what appeared to be massive cheating in his course—cheating that was preventing most of the students from learning the material. Serrano comes across as someone with no inclination to coddle elite students. His attitude may be traceable in part to his own childhood, in which he went blind from retinal dystrophy at age 17 and had to make a choice about what the rest of his life would look like.

这位教授对课程中出现的大规模作弊现象感到震惊——这种作弊行为阻碍了大多数学生掌握学习内容。塞拉诺给人的印象是一个绝不迁就精英学生的人。他的这种态度或许可以追溯到他的童年，他在17岁时因视网膜营养不良而失明，不得不对余生做出抉择。

From El País: After a short-lived crisis, he decided [blindness] would not stop him. He learned Braille, and his excellent academic record opened up the doors of Harvard. “Of course it affects my life, but one shouldn’t over-dramatize. We economists understand reality as a set of people responding to optimization problems with restrictions. I view my disease simply as one more restriction that I have to deal with, and I optimize based on that,” he says.

据《国家报》报道：在经历了一段短暂的危机后，他决定（失明）不会阻挡他。他学习了盲文，优异的学术成绩为他打开了哈佛大学的大门。“当然，它影响了我的生活，但人们不应该过度戏剧化。我们经济学家将现实理解为一组人在限制条件下应对优化问题。我只是把我的疾病看作是我必须处理的又一个限制条件，并在此基础上进行优化，”他说。

As a university, Brown is grappling with hard questions about AI use at the moment. It recently released a provost-led report (PDF) on “Generative AI in Teaching and Learning,” which found that it’s not just professors who have concerns. Even though “56 percent of undergraduate respondents [at Brown] and 67 percent of graduate and medical student respondents reported intentionally using GenAI tools daily or weekly,” the report notes that large majorities of students also have “concerns about the impact of GenAI use on their learning” and a “fear of negative consequences for their cognitive capacity.”

作为一所大学，布朗大学目前正在努力应对有关人工智能使用的棘手问题。该校最近发布了一份由教务长领导的关于“教学中的生成式人工智能”的报告（PDF），发现不仅是教授们有顾虑。尽管“56%的本科受访者和67%的研究生及医学生受访者表示每天或每周都在有意使用生成式AI工具”，但报告指出，绝大多数学生也对“生成式AI使用对学习的影响”感到担忧，并“担心其对认知能力产生的负面后果”。

Serrano shares those concerns, and he wants universities as a whole to stand up for human thought. That’s why he’s not letting this story go, despite what he contends is a fairly tepid reaction from Brown administrators. “We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is okay,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “That leads to a declining society, to a failed society. We cannot choose to become idiots.”

塞拉诺也持有同样的担忧，他希望整个大学界能捍卫人类的思考。这就是为什么尽管他认为布朗大学管理层的反应相当冷淡，但他仍不愿让这件事就此平息。“我们承担不起这样一个社会：我们最优秀的年轻头脑中有相当一部分人认为作弊是可以接受的，”他告诉《高等教育内参》。“这会导致社会衰落，导致社会失败。我们不能选择变蠢。”