this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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We are allowing LLMs for all of our homeworks. As long as you can solve the problems in the indicated way with a reasonable answer.
In case you are not sure about the "indicated way", there are practice questions with detailed step-by-step solutions for each hw problem that you just have to change the numbers/equations a bit and you'll get points.
What we've noticed is that the year-after-year averages are significantly higher, especially this year. However, students are bringing in details that we explicitly didn't go over in lecture and putting that on the homework (e.g. Delayed branching in Computer Architecture, because it's a random quirk of MIPS that even assembly programmers don't have to deal with). None of these details are ever mentioned in lecture or the practice homeworks (in a few cases, they are mentioned with the explicit wording "do not worry about this now")
We can only assume people are copying the homework into LLMs and copying the results straight down. The latest exam had a question where students were asked to analyze a specific chunk of assembly code to deduce certain properties about it. Approximately 20-30% of the students didn't know the FORMAT to answer it, despite it literally being item 1 on last week's homework.
And when I say format, I don't mean exactly "you must write these exact words or you lose points". It's literally just point out "line A and B have this property X because of attribute Y". Just including ABXY as shown in the practice homework is enough. But apparently people are too lazy to read a 10 bullet point answer...