Roberto Serrano

So their experience would be kind of like going to the gym, but never lifting a heavy enough weight to make them stronger in the long run.

So I got even more concerned when in late spring of 2026, a few months after I wrote the essay, I read about an incident at Brown University in an economics class taught by Professor Roberto Serrano.

Serrano had been teaching his advanced undergraduate course in welfare economics and social choice for almost two decades.

Following the terrible campus shooting at Brown in December of 2025, Serrano decided to change his syllabus for the upcoming spring term so that the midterms and the final exams were all take-home rather than in person like he'd been doing for two decades.

If I assign a 20-page final paper to be turned in at the end of the semester, and then I ban AI on my course syllabus without enforcing it at all, the problem is solved from my end.

right? But not for them.

They face this dilemma that the students faced in Roberto Serrano's class and many other classes across the country.

I'm old enough to have developed my writing and thinking skills before temptations like AI existed, which means it's pretty easy for me to put the AI down and do the writing on my own.

Yeah.

So an economics professor, Roberto Serrano, um, gave a-- I think I'm gonna maybe forget some of the details, but he-- basically, he gave an assignment, um, and allowed students to use-- or he actually-- don't even think he said you can use AI.

He just didn't say it, and he got all these assignments back, um, that were suspiciously well done.

So basically, people were doing economics at a level that was much higher than what he was teaching and almost suspiciously so.