Assignment AI-use checklistbefore you submit an assessment or a paper

Why this came up in late October and early November 2026

In late October 2026, UC Berkeley mathematician and Fields Medalist Richard Borcherds told interviewers he had stopped grading homework for correctness. Student use of AI was, he said, now widespread, and "grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework instead of doing it themselves, and penalizes students for honesty." He now awards credit mainly for handing the work in, and bases grades mainly on in-person exams with no electronic devices. The Daily Californian also reported that the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate asks faculty to include a statement about AI-tool expectations in syllabi, and that campus had tried detection tools, including Turnitin and Rumi, and had determined they were not adequate to standardise. The New York Post, Tom's Hardware and TechRadar syndicated the interviews. One Tom's Hardware post on 27 October recorded 3,516 impressions on 12 November 2026. Individual posts about the story were otherwise modest, so the official campus paper and the published quotations are the primary record cited here.

On 3 November 2026, the University of Liverpool published a plain-language explainer of its assessment AI rules. Assessments are grouped into four tiers, from Tier 1, where AI use is not allowed (including basic grammar checkers, unless an approved support plan says otherwise), through Tier 4, where AI use is required and the student is still responsible for checking the work. Tiers 2 and 3 require a declaration or a citation of AI use. "Regardless of the tier of your assessment, work that contains fabricated references or data, deepfakes, is of false authorship, or resulted from uploading personal, confidential or sensitive data, is strictly prohibited." Liverpool also notes that professionally regulated programmes may have stricter rules than the university default. That is one university's published framework, not a universal rule.

The checks are written so they also help a student, a tutor or a researcher the next time a brief has to be read before a file is handed in. Always follow the rules for the specific assessment or journal you are submitting to.

Sources: The Daily Californian, the New York Post, Tom's Hardware's 27 October post, and the University of Liverpool's 3 November explainer.

If a draft is one you may need to stand behind later

Before you submit an assessment or a paper:

1. Keep dated copies of your own drafts from before any assistant was used, and of the version you will hand in.
2. Make a TimeBind of each exact file you already hold. The fingerprint is made in your browser and the file stays on your device.
3. Store the drafts, a short note of the tools you used, and the Proof of Time Certificate together, and still follow the brief.

A TimeBind shows the exact file existed no later than the recorded time and still matches. It is not a finding of authorship, and it is not a detector.

What a TimeBind shows, and what it does not. It shows that an exact file existed no later than a recorded time and that a copy shown later still matches its fingerprint. It does not show who made the file, who owns it, that its contents are true, or whether AI was used to make or edit it. This is general information, not legal advice.