A professor at Brown, one of the Ivy League universities in the States, let his class sit a hard economics midterm as a take-home test for the first time. It came back averaging 96 out of 100, with forty perfect scores, in a course that normally averages between 65 and 80.
So he moved the final exam to being in person. The average dropped to 48.
That gap, 96 down to 48, is what this week's video is about. The "cheating" is the obvious part. What interests me is what those two numbers ask... when you take the AI crutch away, how much thinking is actually left underneath?
I make the case that this is really just cognitive debt. Not brain rot, and no reason to ban AI. But if you offload the thinking, you get the cheap win now, and the bill for your cognitive debt turns up later, whether that's a graduate in a job interview, a colleague drowning in work slop, or your own kids down the track.
Also in the video essay, I share the two "golden rule" questions we teach at Ten Past Tomorrow to make sure AI makes you mentally sharper rather than lazy.
Sources & citations
- The Artificial Intelligence Show, Episode #225 (Marketing AI Institute), Paul Roetzer & Mike Kaput.
- Brown professor suspects most of his class used AI to cheat, Inside Higher Ed, 8 July 2026.
