4 ms·

But if I wrote the prompt—and a prompt is all that it takes to produce writing nowadays—isn't it mine? Where is the line between ChatGPT and Grammerly? Grammer

But if I wrote the prompt—and a prompt is all that it takes to produce writing nowadays—isn't it mine? Where is the line between ChatGPT and Grammerly? Grammerly won't produce entire paragraphs, but it absolutely will rewrite sentences.

thorncorona 4y ago
Having someone edit your writing is very different than having someone produce your writing. If I ask a human to write a 500 word essay on the invention of the computer, but give them the prompt, that is absolutely plagiarism. If I ask Grammerly to write a 500 word essay on the invention of the computer, but give them the prompt, that is still absolutely plagiarism.
anigbrowl 4y ago
In this context, the initial prompt is the one from the teacher to the student that describes an essay title or topic. Adding prompts like 'academic writing' or 'avoid excessive detail' don't constitute any real creative or intellectual contribution. Do you think buying a cheeseburger makes you a chef?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > Do you think buying a cheeseburger makes you a chef? No, because someone else was the chef in that case. But if I bought a conveyer belt machine that made cheeseburgers automatically at the press of a button, and I used that machine to cook dinner—maybe! If we lived in a world where machines like that were common, the meaning of "cooking" would change...
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    I don't think so. I used to cook for a living and still make meals regularly at home, I'm pretty good at it. But sometimes I just want cup noodles, and when I make them I don't consider it cooking. Maybe a better example is popcorn. I can make it in a microwave, or I can make it in a pot on the stove from scratch. It takes about the same amount of time, and the quality is about the same. But doing it by hand involves many more small decisions, like the amount of oil, corn kernels, heat, cook time, knowing when to stop, what flavor ingredients to add and how much etc. Now I can do it on autopilot and never have a single burned or unpopped kernel, but it took maybe 100 less-than-perfect efforts to get to that.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
    False. A craft requires deliberate effort and practice otherwise to proudly claim the "act of creation" (I cooked X, I drew Y, I wrote Z) has no meaning.
kuhewa 4y ago
You are making 'letter of the law's arguments for a very much 'spirit of the law' issue. If we just grant you are absolutely correct for argument's sake, it would plainly indicate the letter of the law needs to change.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  ...I think the world needs to change. Students need to learn how to produce the best writing they can. If their best writing comes from feeding a prompt into ChatGPT, they should use ChatGPT. Presumably this student will also use ChatGPT in their writing post-graduation. Of course, I would expect such a student to get marked down for factual errors, logical inconsistencies, and a lack of citations! Some students, however, may take a hybrid approach, in which ChatGPT writes certain passages which the student manually cleans up. IMO, this is completely acceptable, and probably a good skill to practice! Students should learn how to use technology to produce the best work they can! There are absolutely exceptions, when you'd want a student to practice writing independently. But writing the whole thing off as "plagiarism" is going much too far!
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    ChatGPT will certainly affect teaching methodology. But there's a reason why we teach students arithmetic and basic algebra without calculators, long after calculators were already ubiquitous. The same goes for composing an essay. It's not just about the ability to produce a cogent-looking essay, in the same way it isn't good enough that a kid can punch 17*13 into a calculator.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      ^ I actually think we spend too much time on arithmetic, and should let students use calculators starting earlier than we do. But, yes, calculators shouldn't always be allowed, and neither should ChatGPT. But, well, "plagiarism" is never allowed, so IMO the distinction matters!
  - asdff 4y ago
asdff 4y ago
I could write a prompt and send it to someone for cash to write me an essay. It's still not my essay. Chatgpt is the same here. Grammerly isn't doing research for your essay. Most teachers for those sorts of papers don't care about how well you write anyway, unless its english class, they care about the arguments you've presented and the evidence you use to support them.
throwaway675309 4y ago
What's the difference between this and say something like stable diffusion to generate a piece of artwork? By your logic could I not claim that I drew that ensuing picture because I "wrote the prompt"? Let's take it a step further, what happens if I take my prompt and hire an artist on fiverr? We go back-and-forth via email as I ask them to make various changes and then wind up with a final drawing. Am I still allowed to make the claim that I drew that picture?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > By your logic could I not claim that I drew that ensuing picture because I "wrote the prompt"? I feel like "drawing" is a very specific action involving a writing utensil. I don't think I'd consider an image made in Adobe Illustrator to be "drawn", unless you were using a Wacom or similar. But, yes, I'd say you could claim you "made" or "designed" the ensuing picture. > Let's take it a step further, what happens if I take my prompt and hire an artist on fiverr? We go back-and-forth via email as I ask them to make various changes and then wind up with a final drawing. Am I still allowed to make the claim that I drew that picture? No, because the artist on fiverr drew the picture. Let's tweak this analogy a bit. Let's say you had a photograph of two people holding hands on a crowded beach. You want to retouch the photograph to remove the crowd, so the beach appears empty. If you're lucky, you may be able to use Photoshop's Content Aware Fill to remove the crowd in less than a minute. In this case, you could absolutely claim that you retouched the photograph, even though Photoshop's algorithm did all of the work. A computer program can't be the creator of anything—the person using the program can. If you're unlucky, Photoshop's Content Aware Fill will produce bad results, and you'll have to painstakingly go through the photo by hand. If you're short on time, you could hire a retoucher on Fiverr. In this scenario, however, you wouldn't be able to rightly claim that you retouched the photograph, because another human did that. --- In every other case I can think of, the person using a tool gets to take credit for what they've made with the tool. Use an electronic screwdriver to fix a car? The screwdriver didn't fix the car, you did! Use a calculator to add two large numbers? The calculator didn't find the sum, you did. None of this should change just because we have better tools. Schools may place additional limitations on students for certain assignments—math classes may restrict the use of calculators, art classes may restrict the use of drawing—but these limitations (1) should not always be in place for every assignment and thus (2) should be stated explicitly up-front.

thorncorona 4y ago

Having someone edit your writing is very different than having someone produce your writing. If I ask a human to write a 500 word essay on the invention of the computer, but give them the prompt, that is absolutely plagiarism. If I ask Grammerly to write a 500 word essay on the invention of the computer, but give them the prompt, that is still absolutely plagiarism.

anigbrowl 4y ago

In this context, the initial prompt is the one from the teacher to the student that describes an essay title or topic. Adding prompts like 'academic writing' or 'avoid excessive detail' don't constitute any real creative or intellectual contribution. Do you think buying a cheeseburger makes you a chef?

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> Do you think buying a cheeseburger makes you a chef? No, because someone else was the chef in that case. But if I bought a conveyer belt machine that made cheeseburgers automatically at the press of a button, and I used that machine to cook dinner—maybe! If we lived in a world where machines like that were common, the meaning of "cooking" would change...
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I don't think so. I used to cook for a living and still make meals regularly at home, I'm pretty good at it. But sometimes I just want cup noodles, and when I make them I don't consider it cooking. Maybe a better example is popcorn. I can make it in a microwave, or I can make it in a pot on the stove from scratch. It takes about the same amount of time, and the quality is about the same. But doing it by hand involves many more small decisions, like the amount of oil, corn kernels, heat, cook time, knowing when to stop, what flavor ingredients to add and how much etc. Now I can do it on autopilot and never have a single burned or unpopped kernel, but it took maybe 100 less-than-perfect efforts to get to that.
- throwaway675309 4y ago
  False. A craft requires deliberate effort and practice otherwise to proudly claim the "act of creation" (I cooked X, I drew Y, I wrote Z) has no meaning.

kuhewa 4y ago

You are making 'letter of the law's arguments for a very much 'spirit of the law' issue. If we just grant you are absolutely correct for argument's sake, it would plainly indicate the letter of the law needs to change.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
...I think the world needs to change. Students need to learn how to produce the best writing they can. If their best writing comes from feeding a prompt into ChatGPT, they should use ChatGPT. Presumably this student will also use ChatGPT in their writing post-graduation. Of course, I would expect such a student to get marked down for factual errors, logical inconsistencies, and a lack of citations! Some students, however, may take a hybrid approach, in which ChatGPT writes certain passages which the student manually cleans up. IMO, this is completely acceptable, and probably a good skill to practice! Students should learn how to use technology to produce the best work they can! There are absolutely exceptions, when you'd want a student to practice writing independently. But writing the whole thing off as "plagiarism" is going much too far!
- kuhewa 4y ago
  ChatGPT will certainly affect teaching methodology. But there's a reason why we teach students arithmetic and basic algebra without calculators, long after calculators were already ubiquitous. The same goes for composing an essay. It's not just about the ability to produce a cogent-looking essay, in the same way it isn't good enough that a kid can punch 17*13 into a calculator.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    ^ I actually think we spend too much time on arithmetic, and should let students use calculators starting earlier than we do. But, yes, calculators shouldn't always be allowed, and neither should ChatGPT. But, well, "plagiarism" is never allowed, so IMO the distinction matters!
- asdff 4y ago

asdff 4y ago

I could write a prompt and send it to someone for cash to write me an essay. It's still not my essay. Chatgpt is the same here. Grammerly isn't doing research for your essay. Most teachers for those sorts of papers don't care about how well you write anyway, unless its english class, they care about the arguments you've presented and the evidence you use to support them.

throwaway675309 4y ago

What's the difference between this and say something like stable diffusion to generate a piece of artwork? By your logic could I not claim that I drew that ensuing picture because I "wrote the prompt"? Let's take it a step further, what happens if I take my prompt and hire an artist on fiverr? We go back-and-forth via email as I ask them to make various changes and then wind up with a final drawing. Am I still allowed to make the claim that I drew that picture?

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> By your logic could I not claim that I drew that ensuing picture because I "wrote the prompt"? I feel like "drawing" is a very specific action involving a writing utensil. I don't think I'd consider an image made in Adobe Illustrator to be "drawn", unless you were using a Wacom or similar. But, yes, I'd say you could claim you "made" or "designed" the ensuing picture. > Let's take it a step further, what happens if I take my prompt and hire an artist on fiverr? We go back-and-forth via email as I ask them to make various changes and then wind up with a final drawing. Am I still allowed to make the claim that I drew that picture? No, because the artist on fiverr drew the picture. Let's tweak this analogy a bit. Let's say you had a photograph of two people holding hands on a crowded beach. You want to retouch the photograph to remove the crowd, so the beach appears empty. If you're lucky, you may be able to use Photoshop's Content Aware Fill to remove the crowd in less than a minute. In this case, you could absolutely claim that you retouched the photograph, even though Photoshop's algorithm did all of the work. A computer program can't be the creator of anything—the person using the program can. If you're unlucky, Photoshop's Content Aware Fill will produce bad results, and you'll have to painstakingly go through the photo by hand. If you're short on time, you could hire a retoucher on Fiverr. In this scenario, however, you wouldn't be able to rightly claim that you retouched the photograph, because another human did that. --- In every other case I can think of, the person using a tool gets to take credit for what they've made with the tool. Use an electronic screwdriver to fix a car? The screwdriver didn't fix the car, you did! Use a calculator to add two large numbers? The calculator didn't find the sum, you did. None of this should change just because we have better tools. Schools may place additional limitations on students for certain assignments—math classes may restrict the use of calculators, art classes may restrict the use of drawing—but these limitations (1) should not always be in place for every assignment and thus (2) should be stated explicitly up-front.