At the graduation ceremony held at the Pauley Pavilion of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) earlier this month, Andre Mai, an Asian male student wearing a graduation robe, showed his laptop to the live camera of the ceremony organizer, showing from the screen how to let the artificial intelligence (AI) chat robot ChatGPT answer the final exam questions for him, and shouted to the students around him: “Come on!” The video later went viral on the Internet, and some netizens asked UCLA to revoke Andre Mai’s degree.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Andre Mai double-majored in Computational and Systems Biology and Data Science Engineering at UCLA, and also minored in Music Industry.
The New York Post reported that Andre Mai revealed on the day of his graduation ceremony that he used ChatGPT to answer the exam questions for him, which caused applause from other students present. The video was later forwarded to social networking sites such as Instagram and X, and has attracted millions of views in total.
One netizen wrote on the discussion board of the social networking site Reddit that this will become a serious problem, “Everyone doesn’t need to learn anything. For a tool that can be used to help learn, everyone regards it as a magical universal treasure box.”
MacAndre, who works part-time as a DJ after school, explained in an Instagram video that he just wanted everyone to see “the truth of my computer screen.”
He said that both final exams were difficult, one was due at 5 pm and the other was at midnight; for the last two exams in his college career, he used AI to organize the key points. MacAndre emphasized that this is not cheating because teachers also encourage students to use AI.
The non-profit organization Pew Research Center released a survey in January this year, pointing out that in 2024, 24% of teenagers will use AI chatbots when doing homework, and in 2023, only 13% of teenagers will use chatbots to write homework for them.
