4 ms·

I really doubt you can computer generate a Master's thesis. Completing a Master's thesis at an accredited institution is a heck of a lot of work and even a curs

I really doubt you can computer generate a Master's thesis. Completing a Master's thesis at an accredited institution is a heck of a lot of work and even a cursory reading of a thesis by an examiner, supervisor, opponent, or other interested party would give the generated content away. Maybe if you get your degree from a diploma mill you could get away with it, but then your degree wouldn't be worth toilet paper anyway. I've heard similar stories about generated phd theses and it is even more implausible. The reason is that writing a thesis is much more than just producing a hundred pages or so of prose. Any university student can poop that out in a few weeks. The main job of a thesis is coming up with a research question, conducting an experiment or a study, and describe the results and how it fits in whatever niche of the scientific world you are working in.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I agree that in most cases it would be very difficult to do. But I can imagine some specific circumstances where it could be pulled off, possibly with some manual modifications: soft sciences like sociology (you can't imagine the amount of bs I've read during my college years), the subject matter being very different from the area your supervising prof specializes in, the topic that allows for arbitrary speculation, an underfunded university branch with profs having a more lax attitude.
- andai 5y ago
  https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dash2 5y ago
Oh my sweet summer child. I regularly get dissertations with any or all of: barely readable English, useless empirics, half-baked research questions.
- pottertheotter 5y ago
  How are dissertations getting to you like that? When I did my PhD, no one would have allowed a PhD student to start writing a dissertation without first having sufficient research questions and then completing appropriate statistical analyses.
  - dash2 5y ago
    These are Masters students.
haihaibye 5y ago
Computer generated articles from much older technology than GPT3 have made it through peer review https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01436-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01436-7
- bjourne 5y ago
  That is different. People who submit computer-generated papers submit them to hundreds of journals. A few of them are bound to have so lax editorial standards that they are let through. They also risk nothing, while the student who is caught computer-generating their thesis will be thrown out. Furthermore, the amount of peer review-like process a thesis or dissertation goes through is an order of magnitude greater than the amount of peer review an article gets.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I agree that in most cases it would be very difficult to do. But I can imagine some specific circumstances where it could be pulled off, possibly with some manual modifications: soft sciences like sociology (you can't imagine the amount of bs I've read during my college years), the subject matter being very different from the area your supervising prof specializes in, the topic that allows for arbitrary speculation, an underfunded university branch with profs having a more lax attitude.

andai 5y ago
https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dash2 5y ago

Oh my sweet summer child. I regularly get dissertations with any or all of: barely readable English, useless empirics, half-baked research questions.

pottertheotter 5y ago
How are dissertations getting to you like that? When I did my PhD, no one would have allowed a PhD student to start writing a dissertation without first having sufficient research questions and then completing appropriate statistical analyses.
- dash2 5y ago
  These are Masters students.

haihaibye 5y ago

Computer generated articles from much older technology than GPT3 have made it through peer review https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01436-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01436-7

bjourne 5y ago
That is different. People who submit computer-generated papers submit them to hundreds of journals. A few of them are bound to have so lax editorial standards that they are let through. They also risk nothing, while the student who is caught computer-generating their thesis will be thrown out. Furthermore, the amount of peer review-like process a thesis or dissertation goes through is an order of magnitude greater than the amount of peer review an article gets.