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It may not be long before passable high school and college essays can be undetectably generated by software. I wonder what we'll do then. At some point, I gues

It may not be long before passable high school and college essays can be undetectably generated by software. I wonder what we'll do then. At some point, I guess we'll have writer software that pretty much generates nicely articulated narrative for whatever it is we wish to say. "Write up something about global warming. Make it borderline skeptical, quote the Concerned Scientists and so forth. You know what to say."

harryh 13y ago
That would mean that a computer had passed the Turing test which would be...quite an achievement.
- jeremyjh 13y ago
  Not at all - you aren't engaged in conversation with a paper you are reading.
  - harryh 13y ago
    Hrmmm. Yes, that's true. I stand corrected!
tokenadult 13y ago
It may not be long before passable high school and college essays can be undetectably generated by software. I wonder what we'll do then. If we fed such a program good-quality reference books, we could massively improve the quality of most Wikipedia articles.
maxander 13y ago
Happily (?) high school and college essays (and probably potential scientific publications) will also be read chiefly by software in the near future, just as GRE essays are graded in part by software today. Whichever side has the best algorithm wins.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  This is pretty much the case now: ghosted essays are marked by ghosted professors.