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Is it clearly plagiarism? I wouldn't say it is that clear-cut, since in a sense the output of an LLM to a prompt you give it could still be seen as something yo
by mckirk 2y ago
Is it clearly plagiarism? I wouldn't say it is that clear-cut, since in a sense the output of an LLM to a prompt you give it could still be seen as something you produced -- albeit with the help of a magical matmul genie.
- result2vino 2y agoYes. It’s clearly plagiarism. Your reply is clearly grasping at the furthest of straws in an attempt to be contrarian and add another “stochastic parrot hehe!” comment to the already overflowing pile. Line up 100 people and the only ones agreeing with you are other wannabe contrarians.
- mckirk 2y agoI truly don't understand the tone of your comment. I'm not grasping at the furthest of straws, I see a distinction between 'verbatim copying someone else's work' and 'verbatim copying the results of a tool that produces text'.
- bdangubic 2y agothe tool actually produces text… of someone else’s work… that you then copy… verbatim… :)
- mckirk 2y agoBut the text itself is not someone else's work verbatim. A translation tool like DeepL is presumably trained on a huge amount of 'other people's work'. Is copying its result verbatim into your own work also plagiarism then?
- bdangubic 2y agoplagiarism - by definition - is copying someone else’s work. the easier definition is “did YOU write this?” if answer is no - you plagiarised it and should be punished to the full extent.
- mckirk 2y ago'Someone else's work' -- exactly. Not 'the output of some tool'. I'm not saying what the guy did wasn't wrong or dumb, I'm saying: Plagiarism has a strict definition, and I don't think it can be applied to the case of directly copying the output of an LLM -- because plagiarism refers to copying the work of another author, and I don't think LLMs are generally regarded (so far) as being able to have this kind of 'authorhood'.
- bdangubic 2y agoplagiarism does NOT refer to copying the work of another author, it refers to you submitting work as yours that you didn’t yourself write. if I copy entire article from the Economist, did I plagiarize!? There is no author attribution so we don’t know the author… Many articles in media today are LLM generated (fully or partially), can I copy those if someone sticks there name as author?! bottom line is - you didn’t do the work but copied it from elsewhere, you plagiarized it, period
- mckirk 2y agoI'll just link here to another comment I made that sums up my argument quite well, I think: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42246168
- nkrisc 2y ago> A translation tool like DeepL is presumably trained on a huge amount of 'other people's work'. Is copying its result verbatim into your own work also plagiarism then? Yes, if you present yourself as its author.
- mckirk 2y agoSo let's say you are not a native English speaker and write a passage of your paper in your native language, then let DeepL translate this and paste the result into your paper, without a note or citation. Is that plagiarism?
- gklitz 2y agoPlagerism isn’t the copying part, it’s the part where you claim to be the author of something you are not the author of. Hope that helps to clear up things. You can plagerism content that your are both legally and ethically allowed to copy. It doesn’t matter the least bit. If you claim to be the author of content you didn’t author and lack attribution AI or otherwise then you’re plagering the content.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nkrisc 2y agoDid he write it? Did he write 99% of it? 98%? Less than 5% of it? Then did he represent it as his own work?
- JohnFen 2y agoIt seems clear to me. The student is claiming that he wrote something that he didn't write.
- mckirk 2y agoDefinition of plagiarism, by the Cambridge Dictionary: "the process or practice of using another person's ideas or work and pretending that it is your own" What I am objecting to is the "another person's" part. An LLM is not a person, it is a tool -- a tool that is trained on other people's work, yes. If you use a different tool like DeepL, which is also trained on other people's work, to produce text purely from an original prompt you give it (i.e. translate something you wrote yourself), and you put that into your paper... is that then plagiarism as well? If not, what if you use an LLM to do the translation instead, instructing it to act strictly as a 'translation tool'? It seems to me, the mere act of directly copying the output of an LLM into your own work without a reference cannot be considered plagiarism (in every case), unless LLMs are considered people. Of course, you can prompt an LLM in a way that copying its output would _definitely_ be plagiarism (i.e., asking it to quote the Declaration of Independence verbatim, and then simply copying that). So, all I'm saying is: The distinction is not that clear, has nuances, and depends on the context.
- yifanl 2y agoThere's nuances to the amount of harm dealt to the authors based on what sources you are stealing from, but it's irrelevant here, as the specific incident we're talking about is whether or not the student is the actual author of the work submitted. It'd be the same as if I had Google Translate do my German 101 exam. I even typed the word "germuse" with my own two thumbs!
- mckirk 2y agoWhat we are talking about in this sub-thread is exclusively the 'this is clearly plagiarism' part. If you used Google Translate for your German 101 exam, that would be academic dishonesty/cheating, but not plagiarism.