4 ms·

Oh, they sure as heck are gonna get away with it, see this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/sharplm/status/1524024667576619008 https://twitter.com/sharplm/st

by mizzao 4y ago

Oh, they sure as heck are gonna get away with it, see this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/sharplm/status/1524024667576619008 https://twitter.com/sharplm/status/1524024667576619008 Students are going to generate writing they didn't do with GPT-3 And teachers are going to use the discriminator part of a GAN to figure out if students did their own writing

zw123456 4y ago
OMG, so nothing ever changes, the game has just been upped is all! But here is sort of the funny thing, as I have gotten older, I have grown to appreciate things like poetry a lot more and have even tried my hand at it a few times for fun. I guess it just proves the old adage "retirement is wasted on the old and school is wasted on the young". Not sure who said that. I probably just committed plagiarism for not including an attribution. Sorry to whomever said it, wait, let me copy some Tracy Chapman Lyrics for the apology :)
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  I think you're thinking of "Sorry seems to be the long3st word " (c) Elvis John.
bambax 4y ago
Using GPT-3 is cheating, but it could be argued it's not "plagiarism" per se. Plagiarism is copying someone else's work; using AI (or an essay farm manned by humans) is outsourcing the creation of a new thing.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Plagiarism is at heart claiming as your own what isn't. If it's somebody else's, give them credit. If it's algorithm or automated output, say so.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  AIs can’t have copyright. So it’s not even cheating. They just used tools is all. If the rules say you can’t use an AI (maybe spellcheck, depending how define AI and grammar check would be cheating), then it would be cheating.
  - karatinversion 4y ago
    I don't think the notion of copyright enters into it at all. Schools generally have policy to the effect that anything submitted must be the student's own work, not that another entity cannot have copyright over it. You couldn't submit out-of-copyright text without attribution, either.
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      What I’m saying is that AI can’t legally “own” text, thus it is legally your own creation.
      - dredmorbius 4y ago
        If you didn't create it, it isn't your creations. It's algorithmic output.
        withinboredom 4y ago
        You can argue that it is no different than spell check and grammar check. It takes your inaccurately written text and turns it into accurate text. It doesn’t generate anything from thin air, so no. It isn’t “algorithmic output” unless we want to consider other tools as “algorithmic output” as well.
        dredmorbius 4y ago
        Spellcheck works (and often fails) at the level of individual words. Grammar checkers involve more extensive sets of relationships, typically at the level of a sentence, but are still limited to parts-of-speech agreement, relationships, tenses, and the like. GPT-3 is constructing entire narratives from prompts. It operates at the level of multiple sentences and paragraphs, to the scope of an entire essay itself. Based on a provided prompt, it generates an essay. By your same logic, an instructor assigning a class essay would be considered the author of those essays as that instructor had generated the prompt. Moreover, as a matter of pedagogy, where a course either assigns group work (such that multiple students are contributing to an essay), or requires drafts and reviews with an instructor, TA, or other students as part of the overall essay-writing assignment, those become acknowledge parts of the process. In the case of the draft / review / revise cycle, it would seem that that is one way of putting a check on AI-generated essays, at least for now, as though generators can follow prompts, they're rather more limited in taking criticism well, and adapting to it.
- fourthark 4y ago
  Isn't it a grey line whether GPT-3 creates an original work or a derivative of potentially thousands of works? There was the famous example where Copilot regenerated some John Carmack code verbatim with cussing comments, presumably because that code had been copied many times already. Somewhere I read about GPT-3 committing clear plagiarism in English text, too, i.e. drawing way too much from one source and reproducing it.
tkgally 4y ago
One kind of AI-enabled plagiarism that can be very difficult to detect is done by students who are writing in a second language. They copy-and-paste text from Wikipedia (or whatever) in their first language into DeepL or Google Translate and submit the output to their teachers as if it were their original work. Teachers sometimes become suspicious because the students’ submitted texts contain many fewer grammatical errors and nonidiomatic expressions than the students’ speech or in-class writing. But it is hard to prove plagiarism if the teachers cannot do web searches in the students’ first language. I did hear once, though, of a cut-and-paste MT translation being caught by a teacher because it included some large unique numbers, which did appear in a Google search. A related issue that writing teachers are struggling to come to terms with is whether second-language writers are cheating when they use MT to translate texts that they originally wrote in their first language. Some teachers, especially in language-focused classes, believe that the use of MT hurts the students’ language acquisition and thus defeats one purpose of the writing assignments; they also think it is unfair to other students who struggle to write in the second language without the help of MT. Other teachers believe that writers should be allowed to use whatever tools are available to them as long as their content is original.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Really interesting question and I can see both sides. After all, it's arguably only one step away from Grammarly correcting errors and otherwise fine-tuning your writing. I don't personally use it but I know people who swear by it. And presumably almost no one would consider that cheating.

by mizzao 4y ago

zw123456 4y ago

OMG, so nothing ever changes, the game has just been upped is all! But here is sort of the funny thing, as I have gotten older, I have grown to appreciate things like poetry a lot more and have even tried my hand at it a few times for fun. I guess it just proves the old adage "retirement is wasted on the old and school is wasted on the young". Not sure who said that. I probably just committed plagiarism for not including an attribution. Sorry to whomever said it, wait, let me copy some Tracy Chapman Lyrics for the apology :)

InCityDreams 4y ago
I think you're thinking of "Sorry seems to be the long3st word " (c) Elvis John.

bambax 4y ago

Using GPT-3 is cheating, but it could be argued it's not "plagiarism" per se. Plagiarism is copying someone else's work; using AI (or an essay farm manned by humans) is outsourcing the creation of a new thing.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Plagiarism is at heart claiming as your own what isn't. If it's somebody else's, give them credit. If it's algorithm or automated output, say so.
withinboredom 4y ago
AIs can’t have copyright. So it’s not even cheating. They just used tools is all. If the rules say you can’t use an AI (maybe spellcheck, depending how define AI and grammar check would be cheating), then it would be cheating.
- karatinversion 4y ago
  I don't think the notion of copyright enters into it at all. Schools generally have policy to the effect that anything submitted must be the student's own work, not that another entity cannot have copyright over it. You couldn't submit out-of-copyright text without attribution, either.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    What I’m saying is that AI can’t legally “own” text, thus it is legally your own creation.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      If you didn't create it, it isn't your creations. It's algorithmic output.
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        You can argue that it is no different than spell check and grammar check. It takes your inaccurately written text and turns it into accurate text. It doesn’t generate anything from thin air, so no. It isn’t “algorithmic output” unless we want to consider other tools as “algorithmic output” as well.
        dredmorbius 4y ago
        Spellcheck works (and often fails) at the level of individual words. Grammar checkers involve more extensive sets of relationships, typically at the level of a sentence, but are still limited to parts-of-speech agreement, relationships, tenses, and the like. GPT-3 is constructing entire narratives from prompts. It operates at the level of multiple sentences and paragraphs, to the scope of an entire essay itself. Based on a provided prompt, it generates an essay. By your same logic, an instructor assigning a class essay would be considered the author of those essays as that instructor had generated the prompt. Moreover, as a matter of pedagogy, where a course either assigns group work (such that multiple students are contributing to an essay), or requires drafts and reviews with an instructor, TA, or other students as part of the overall essay-writing assignment, those become acknowledge parts of the process. In the case of the draft / review / revise cycle, it would seem that that is one way of putting a check on AI-generated essays, at least for now, as though generators can follow prompts, they're rather more limited in taking criticism well, and adapting to it.
fourthark 4y ago
Isn't it a grey line whether GPT-3 creates an original work or a derivative of potentially thousands of works? There was the famous example where Copilot regenerated some John Carmack code verbatim with cussing comments, presumably because that code had been copied many times already. Somewhere I read about GPT-3 committing clear plagiarism in English text, too, i.e. drawing way too much from one source and reproducing it.

tkgally 4y ago

One kind of AI-enabled plagiarism that can be very difficult to detect is done by students who are writing in a second language. They copy-and-paste text from Wikipedia (or whatever) in their first language into DeepL or Google Translate and submit the output to their teachers as if it were their original work. Teachers sometimes become suspicious because the students’ submitted texts contain many fewer grammatical errors and nonidiomatic expressions than the students’ speech or in-class writing. But it is hard to prove plagiarism if the teachers cannot do web searches in the students’ first language. I did hear once, though, of a cut-and-paste MT translation being caught by a teacher because it included some large unique numbers, which did appear in a Google search. A related issue that writing teachers are struggling to come to terms with is whether second-language writers are cheating when they use MT to translate texts that they originally wrote in their first language. Some teachers, especially in language-focused classes, believe that the use of MT hurts the students’ language acquisition and thus defeats one purpose of the writing assignments; they also think it is unfair to other students who struggle to write in the second language without the help of MT. Other teachers believe that writers should be allowed to use whatever tools are available to them as long as their content is original.

ghaff 4y ago
Really interesting question and I can see both sides. After all, it's arguably only one step away from Grammarly correcting errors and otherwise fine-tuning your writing. I don't personally use it but I know people who swear by it. And presumably almost no one would consider that cheating.