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 :)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What I’m saying is that AI can’t legally “own” text, thus it is legally your own creation.

As the parent said, plagiarism has very little to do with copyright or legalities. If a human essay farm assigns the copyright of what they've written to you--which is very common in a work for hire situation--it's still cheating in the eyes of pretty much any school.

ADDED: There is a degree of I know cheating when I see it. But, absent specific instructions to the contrary, spell checkers and grammar checkers/recommenders seem to fall pretty clearly into the assistive tools category whereas GPT-3 does not.

The author still had to write the prompt, edit it, etc. these are still skills that are (imho) more valuable than the writing itself. It is no more “assistive” than turning “waht” into “what”. In both cases the computer must infer what I mean and replace it with the appropriate string.

Legalities do matter here. The definition is “taking someone else’s work.” AI (currently) has no rights and no ownership. It is an “it” and not a “someone.” You are using a tool, an advanced tool that should be dealt with on a case by case basis. IOW, “don’t bring a graphing calculator.”

No, this does not enter into it at all. The universities set their assessment policies how they see reasonable, and will generally not allow auto-generated text. Just like it is not illegal to have a smartphone in an exam, but you can still be failed for it if it’s against the rules of the university.

Not to be tooo pedantic, but you agree spellcheck is against the rules? It’s “auto-generated text.”

But it appears we are on the same page. If it’s directly against the rules, that’s different (like bringing an advanced calculator to an elementary math exam). But it def isn’t plagiarism.

If you didn't create it, it isn't your creations. It's algorithmic output.

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.

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.

> 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.

Hol up, didn't you just describe academic research?! Sounds like we're on the right path here.

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.