{"id":598720,"date":"2026-08-20T02:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/598720\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T02:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:32:09","slug":"uc-berkeley-professor-admits-to-using-ai-to-edit-op-ed-on-students-math-skills-us-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/598720\/","title":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley professor admits to using AI to edit op-ed on students\u2019 math skills | US universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a \u201csevere\u201d math deficiency among students in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard<\/a>, admitted to using artificial intelligence<\/a> to help edit the piece.<\/p>\n

The Standard published a 2,000-word piece by Zvezdelina Stankova last week, in which the professor said some of her math students were \u201cfive to eight years\u201d behind and lacked a \u201cmiddle school\u201d education on fractions and basic algebra. Stankova said the UC system\u2019s test-blind admissions were to blame, suggesting that students who weren\u2019t sufficiently prepared for the rigor of Berkeley\u2019s mathematics program were admitted because a longstanding benchmark like the SAT had disappeared.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, journalists at Berkeley\u2019s student newspaper, the Daily Californian, noticed the op-ed\u2019s language sounded like AI<\/a>. According to Berkeley sophomore Francis Luo, they ran it through AI-detection software Pangram, which claimed 33% of the op-ed had been generated or assisted by AI.<\/p>\n

In response, Stankova admitted she had used AI software to \u201chelp edit the piece\u201d but that the article was \u201cthe result of several hundred person-hours of intensive human work, of which about 80 hours are my own\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stankova said by email she had used AI to locate \u201cnumerous documents and articles related to the initiative\u201d but that \u201call analysis is the result of the team members\u201d.<\/p>\n

When asked about their AI usage policy, the Standard \u2013 which published the op-ed \u2013 shared this statement by email: \u201cWhile AI may assist, our expectation is that humans are behind every article we publish and take responsibility for every word. Our understanding in working with the author of this op ed was \u2013 and continues to be \u2013 that this piece reflects her and her colleagues\u2019 extensive original analysis, research and expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stankova\u2019s admission has prompted a larger debate on social media on the use of AI by academics. Some criticized Stankova, calling its use \u201cironic<\/a>\u201d for a piece discussing students\u2019 underpreparedness, or arguing an op-ed should have been entirely original and written without artificial assistance. Others defended the professor, saying the use of AI was not a serious issue and distracted from the argument at hand.<\/p>\n

Stankova, in her email, said \u201cthe issue of how AI was used \u2026 is orthogonal to and a distraction from the thousands of hours our team has put into the initiative\u201d of reinstating standardized tests in admission.<\/p>\n

The debate over whether tests like the SAT or ACT should be again used in UC admissions has intensified over recent years. In 2020, the UC regents voted to phase out the tests as a requirement for application; so did institutions like Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Yale. Each of those peer colleges have since reinstated the requirement.<\/p>\n

In her op-ed, Stankova shared data that she and her peers had analyzed, which suggested that the number of students with a \u201csevere deficit\u201d in their readiness for a calculus I class had tripled after test-blind admissions were introduced. Prior to publishing her op-ed last week, Stankova \u2013 in addition to more than 3,000 other UC faculty members \u2013 signed a June letter<\/a> supporting admissions testing. Stankova, one of the letter\u2019s authors, said AI was also used for editing there.<\/p>\n

The UC academic senate said in a late July statement that it would begin<\/a> a review to determine whether standardized tests would again be used in admissions. If reinstated, the changes would affect fall 2028 admissions at earliest.<\/p>\n

The UC system also has its own \u201cAI council\u201d, which helps develop AI initiatives and resources for its colleges. Camille Crittenden, a member of the council, said she was unaware whether faculty had any specific guidance regarding the use of AI in personal research or editorials, but said that \u201cmost AI detection tools are still quite unreliable and lack nuance\u201d with regard to Pangram.<\/p>\n

On its website, Pangram claims it correctly identifies AI-generated documents 99.66% of the time, or gives one false positive about every 24,000 documents scanned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a \u201csevere\u201d math deficiency among students in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-598720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}