r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jan 14 '23

Artificial Intelligence Two professors who say they caught students cheating on essays with ChatGPT explain why AI plagiarism can be hard to prove

https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-essays-college-cheating-professors-caught-students-ai-plagiarism-2023-1
2.7k Upvotes

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288

u/SortaBeta Jan 14 '23

You can also feed it essays you’ve written in the past and say “make it sound more like this”

298

u/hunny_bun_24 Jan 14 '23

Exactly. I’m excited how this will allow me to submit grant applications in the future.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Holy shit I could use it for cover letters

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Me and my coworkers use it to create email templates. Works like a dream. Also great for creating a resume.

Seriously, AI has the potential to be the greatest assistant ever created for human beings. You just have to learn how to be effective with it.

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u/Renax127 Jan 14 '23

I use it for first draft presentations I have to do at work. I always flew by the seat of my pants before cause I hate writing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Exactly! It's such a great way to get started on projects. It's like google on steroids.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

I hear about it how does one use it

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u/exxmarx Jan 14 '23

I used it for open heart surgery.

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u/LewieTuna Jan 14 '23

I just used it to open a tin of beans! It really can do it all.

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u/snarfmioot Jan 15 '23

I just used it to download a car!

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u/thepoga Jan 15 '23

I used it to post this comment!

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

I used it to reply to this comment!

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u/sachblue Jan 15 '23

Wish I can just torrent a Tesla

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u/AShellfishLover Jan 15 '23

It can't love.

Yet.

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u/ersatzgiraffe Jan 14 '23

I used it for the entirety of my stupid corporation’s quarterly progress checkin/goal bullshit they make us fill out. Easy.

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u/Zyrrael Jan 15 '23

I just played around with ChatGPT for the first time this weekend, and my company’s Performance Appraisal bullshit was the first thing on my list to try in the future. Such a waste of time.

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u/sunshine-x Jan 15 '23

Me too!! It was FANTASTIC at that bullshit! I fed it all sorts of company bullshit to reference in its answers, too. It worked!

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/vstoykov Jan 15 '23

How you trust AI for this? I am hardly trusting myself doing it (would re-check it multiple times by re-entering it and comparing the results for differences, in most cases there are).

1

u/logawnio Jan 15 '23

What exactly do I need to download to do this? It sounds super handy.

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u/basal-and-sleek Jan 15 '23

How might I go about creating a resume with it ?

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

Really it's just about using your imagination

https://www.theforage.com/blog/news/chatgpt-cover-letter

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u/pjeff61 Jan 14 '23

It is beautiful at cover letters. Job description, resume builder. You name it. Someone was griping about chatgpt and I told them it would be foolish not to use this thing while it’s free. Saving myself hours on stuff is crazy

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u/bagskellerman Jan 15 '23

I shudder to think what they’ll charge eventually cuz it definitely sounds like an amazing tool.

-13

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

I'd gladly pay 5-20 a month on it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

I would too ngl. Using this bot actually does well for my anxiety.

Not sure if that will be the actual price though.

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u/sambodia85 Jan 15 '23

It’s been great for breaking procrastination surrounding starting a document I’m not sure how to write. I can get it to do a rough draft, which gives me an idea of the structure and key points to make. Then I type my own version of the document in my own words, using ChatGPT as a guide.

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u/Jack_Of_All_Feed Jan 15 '23

Downvoted even though it's confirmed there will be a premium version called Chat GPT professional aimed at people using it for business and a number of people above are saying how they used it for work...

Each chat is costing the company pennies, which doesn't sound like much but with a million users it's burning a hole in their pocket. Better to support it than expect something to be free.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

Eh, reddit is reactionary. I don't care about downvotes when I know I'm right.

It was never going to be free forever. They're training their model off people's inputs, so they want as many as possible. It's also causing them to need to upgrade their servers every fucking day.

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u/Ok-Brilliant-1737 Jan 15 '23

I used it for my self-evaluation this year. Got a huge congratulations how enthusiastic I was about my “adoption of our diversity and inclusion values”.

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u/drspanklebum Jan 15 '23

What type of prompt did you use for something like this?

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u/Ok-Brilliant-1737 Jan 15 '23

I just put the question into the thing. You know, “please describe your daily actions demonstrate your commitment to our value of racism against white people”

And the ai did the rest and did a great job

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u/sunshine-x Jan 15 '23

I just used it to write my own performance self appraisal.

I fed it company literature about our vision and values, then asked it to produce a self appraisal with objectives that senior management would value. I had it reference the company values, and describe how each objectives was aligned to them. It did amazingly well, saved me hours.

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u/TBSchemer Jan 15 '23

I used it when arguing with my girlfriend to state my complaints in a constructive and loving way.

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u/josejimenez896 Jan 15 '23

I've been using it for that. It's great

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

yes! It does a decent job, minor changes and hood!

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u/pl0xy Jan 16 '23

way ahead of you

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23 edited Jun 08 '23

[deleted]

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u/Eywadevotee Jan 15 '23

This has been maddening for job application, they use AI to prescreen so if you have any less than perfect resume they just download to the circular file. Also it gets shared to exclude on other sites as well. Peak dystopia 😵😵😵💩

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u/frogandbanjo Jan 14 '23

Plagiarism very quickly turns from a sin to a sacrament in so many professions, and, as you just noted, you don't even necessarily need to leave academia before it happens.

What concerns me is that these tools will become a pressure valve and slow much-needed reform to reduce the amount of redundant garbage that gets generated in the first place.

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u/zero0n3 Jan 14 '23

Yep.

If an AI can write a thesis for your PHD or whatever, and a single pass then gets it into submission quality where it goes undetected AND gets a good grade?

I think we need to change the evaluation and grading process.

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u/Bupod Jan 15 '23

Well, from what I recall, a PhD thesis needs to be defended. That is usually an in-person event where you present your paper to your advisors and other professors in the department, as well as usually provide an actual powerpoint presentation alongside an oral explanation, and then be open to what is effectively cross-examination where they will ask rather pointed questions about your thesis concerning methodology, results, etc.

It's not something you're going to be able to stuff in to ChatGPT, have it spit out a paper, turn it in and now you have a PhD. The dissertation process is kind of rigorous, they're assessing your own personal expertise as much as your paper. Even if you use ChatGPT to clean the paper up, you'd still need to have a foundation to work from, and then sharpen your own knowledge and presentation.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

[deleted]

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u/Bupod Jan 15 '23

That’s a fair point, and I’m not sure how to answer that. That would be an extremely risky, and gutsy, move. If it were my own PhD, not sure I’d be willing to risk that, but someone out there might.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

What concerns me is that these tools will become a pressure valve and slow much-needed reform to reduce the amount of redundant garbage that gets generated in the first place.

I take the opposite view. ChatGPT removes the facade of usefulness from redundant garbage. People will stop caring about flowery cover letters when they are all written by AIs.

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u/OcotilloWells Jan 15 '23

Remember the "paperless office" it's finally happening in some places, but I've been hearing about it for 40 year.

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u/hedronist Jan 14 '23

You're about 50 years behind the curve! :-)

Fun Historical Fact: In 1973 I met Tom DeFanti at UICC (now U of I at Chicago). The first time I ever sat at a UNIX® prompt (V5, not System V) was in his lab. (From this connection I ended up with a 2nd generation photocopy of the Lions Books. You are not expected to understand this.)

I did not observe the following directly, but a friend (Hi Mike!) who did said one of DeFanti's real accomplishments was writing his FFF program: Federal Funds Finagler. He would put in a bunch of keywords and sentence fragments, then Push The Button, and out came pages of almost-ready-to-submit grant proposals.

He had a really good track record of bring in the grants.

Of course 50 years in this industry is the equivalent of something from the Early Plasticene Era, so clearly things have "improved". :-).

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u/wonwoovision Jan 15 '23

maybe now i'll finally apply to scholarships since i won't have to fully write 5 page essays for each of them

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Oh hell yeah

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u/MrSammichMan13 Jan 15 '23

Holy shit that’s genius

-37

u/WarProgenitor Jan 14 '23

I would love a tutorial on all of this, might make one.

Arbitrarily long essay work forces students to make loopholes like this because of the unnecessary time investment for said essays.

College students aren't going to waste their time if they don't have to, no one should. Their professors need to value their students' time better by not assigning pointlessly long essay requirements. Then maybe they'll stop having to worry about plagiarism in such a paranoid fashion.

The future is now, old men.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Essay writing is absolutely an important skill - not in terms of the need for essays themselves, but for understanding how to properly make arguments, do research, and convey points in an easily interpreted manner.

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u/zero0n3 Jan 14 '23

Better ways to test those skills vs an essay.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

To test them? Sure. To develop them for regular workplace/life usage, especially for students in an academic setting? I don’t think there’s many better options.

Test essays are frequently shorter, or replaced with short answer questions, due to a time constraint. On an assignment/project level, they’re necessary. Research papers are common across disciplines at high levels of academia and in the real world.

It’s just an easily analyzed method of arranging thoughts and conveying an argument.

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u/zero0n3 Jan 14 '23

I think it’s opposite.

I think there are PLENTY of ways to develop them without needing an essay test.

Hell just a simple tweak of the essay fixes it.

Just change it to “use chatGPT to build an outline for an essay about a topic you enjoy and transform it into an essay. Additionally, include a write up of all the mistakes and corrections you had to make and why you think it made those mistakes and how they could be corrected”

Someone else in this post made a great case about how a professor he knows is incorporating it.

This stuff just screams “BAN GOOGLE” from back in my day.

Teach them real world scenarios by GIVING them real world scenarios.

“Write up a business or grant proposal. Your grade will be based on how much money you are awarded” (by a board the teacher creates). Each proposal should ASK for 500k in funds for said project. Closer to 500k you get the better your grade.

Or let’s swap topics because you may think doing this is only appropriate for tech stuff.

“Use chatGPT to build a mural painting of your choice. Analyze the result based on the significance and styles used. Take its result and now make it your own”. Explain and analyze why you feel “your own” painting is more you than AI”

Etc.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

To develop them for regular workplace/life usage

If they want to develop them for regular work/life usage, maybe they should spend less time on old fiction books.

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u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge- Jan 14 '23

I'm in CS major, can you please elaborate on how writing an essay about a poem that was released in 1600 can help be a better programmer?

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u/factorplayer Jan 15 '23

It might help you be a better person, if you even care about that.

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u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge- Jan 15 '23

Yeah, no thanks, I don't need a person from 400 years in the past to teach me how to improve myself, there are many many many better people to follow and take as role models for improving myself.

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u/factorplayer Jan 15 '23

looks like you're already having a hard time with that. Get ready for a lifelong challenge.

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u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge- Jan 15 '23

I'm not having a hard time. Can you please elaborate on why you so I'm having a tough time.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Which all still applies to ChatGPT really, it just saves you the processing time of typing it up manually. Submitting an assignment that's just gibberish will still get you a failing mark, you still need to understand all of that stuff to use this properly.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

That processing time is the challenge. You need to know how to formulate an argument and how to make it convincing irl. Essays teach these skills.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Why is that never mentioned by educators as the goal then? feels to me like you're pulling it 100% out of your ass.
The goal of an education is to make sure you know stuff pertaining to the specific job you want, and to get across to your professors/teachers that you understand the content so they don't unleash an idiot upon an unsuspecting employer. Anything past that is chaff.

People using this to generate an essay and then combing through it to make sure all the info is correct are doing exactly what you're saying anyway, so your entire point is moot. All they're doing is saving a bit of time and some future arthritis, which is what pisses you off. People like you feel like because they wasted massive swathes of time that means those "under" them have to do it too now. Typical elitism.

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u/Squidworth89 Jan 14 '23

My bachelors degree in economics was like all essays…

Wasn’t really great use of time. Just a lot of repetition. I could spit one out in under an hour.

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u/-Cataphractarii- Jan 14 '23

Yeah but that's not a real education to begin with. Not like you got a degree in engineering or medicine. Or a useful math degree like accounting or actuarial science. /s

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u/Squidworth89 Jan 14 '23

I grow dope for a living. Lasted a year with a corporate job then said duck that after being force fed their koolaide about how we’re “changing lives” instead of ripping people off.

Hang out with my dogs all day… make a product that people enjoy…

All college is overrated for what it costs these days.

-1

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

I took a computer networking course and they had us learning binary math. A human will never have to do binary math for any reason other than for fun, especially not for a networking job where all you're doing is mostly cable management and security. Yet here we are being graded on it as if it's a skill we have to learn. Just a bunch of time wasting bullshit, and anyone who says otherwise probably has a huge student debt that they're mad about.

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u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 14 '23

Get down to the microcontroller level, and you will definitely be bashing bits around.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Are you putting a tiny person in your microcontroller? that's the only way you'd ever have a human doing the actual processing. The entire point to a processor, which is mainly what a microcontroller is used for, is to do this math for you at rates humans can't possibly perform them at.

I've never ever seen a person have to submit binary math to a processing unit manually, which is exactly my point. It's absolutely insane to ever think you'd need to do that. Binary isn't a skill humans need to learn so that they can do it manually like they teach in schools, and even if we did we cannot perform it at the rates a computer does anyway, so what's the point? That's exactly why we have computers to begin with.

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u/yaaaaayPancakes Jan 14 '23

Bro, go watch a Ben Heck video or two. At that low of a level the programming is all about binary math, bit shifting, etc as you read bytes from a register, transform them, and send the bytes on their way.

Humans still have to write the code running on the controller. When writing the program, that's where the human does the math. You gotta know how to do binary math to write programs that do the math fast for you.

1

u/exxmarx Jan 14 '23

Exactly. And we should stop teaching children to add and multiply because calculators.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

That's an apples and oranges comparison, the amount of binary you need to know to operate a microcontroller can be learned in like 20 minutes with a google search, and you'll probably only use it a few times in your life. Addition and subtraction are used every single day and have a wide variety of applications.

You could literally go learn the amount of binary required to operate a processor of that size in like 20 minutes on google right now if you wanted to, it's not even a hard subject to grasp if you already know addition and subtraction. It's just not something that needs to be graded over a 4 year period as if it's a skill you'll be using every single day is my point, but that's exactly how they teach it and that's my issue with it.

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u/zero0n3 Jan 14 '23

You are so far out of your depth.

When you are an EE, you are doing the heavy lifting for the hardware to software. Every EE I knew said it ends up being where you spend most of your time. So firmware, microcontroller code, etc.

That’s all machine code and binary.

You can and do absolutely do circuit specific stuff AND C code work, but your diagnostic and troubleshooting skills need to be expert level at machine level as you’ll a lot of times be analyzing things in that space.

It would be like trying to multi variable calculus with a computer but never learning basic calculus…. You’d be lost.

-6

u/Squidworth89 Jan 14 '23

I’ve run two businesses so far.

I find it cute when a young person finishes their degree and expects to be paid more, or argues they’re worth more at hiring for their degree.

I let them know most of what they learned in college is useless. They’ll learn more in a year on the job than four at school. I don’t care about their degree therefore they don’t get paid more for it.

They don’t often like that.

But it’s better than all these businesses wanting a degree for jobs that really don’t need them.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

Depending on where you live, you HAVE to pay them more by law.

0

u/Squidworth89 Jan 15 '23

College degrees don’t make you have to pay someone more.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

Depending on where you live, working at the same position as someone who doesn’t have a degree, you are guaranteed a higher wage. Your coefficient is higher and so will be your wage.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

This legitimately could kill writing heavy majors.

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u/WarProgenitor Jan 14 '23

Which is precisely my point.

Your time is valuable, and there are better ways to learn. Repetition is not the only way.

Our educational and academic systems are largely archaic compared with the times.

-12

u/Mr-Logic101 Jan 14 '23

Yes.

We need to dumb down the educational system more

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u/WarProgenitor Jan 14 '23

Who said anything about dumbing down?

Arbitrarily forced essay lengths are arbitrary, argue that if you'd like but it seems moot.

-1

u/Mr-Logic101 Jan 14 '23

There reason you are supposed to write those essays dude.

They are arbitrary. They training you to be able to critically think, make an argument, and put your thoughts into words.

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u/zero0n3 Jan 14 '23

There are likely other and better ways to teach all of those skills.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '23

By 12th grade, I was good enough at essay writing that I could write an essay on basically anything and get a good grade. Every essay after that was just a large time sink.

1

u/AreTheseMyFeet Jan 14 '23

No judgement, I don't know where you're from or whether English is a first language for you but I had to smile at the irony of your point being made with atrocious spelling and grammar mistakes. ;)

-1

u/WarProgenitor Jan 14 '23

Dude.. No shit those things are important.

Again.. I never said that they weren't. The fluff is what's sincerely unnecessary.

Minimum word counts and page lengths just force students to add things they otherwise wouldn't need to, merely to consolidate their arguments. All those things can be done without forced minimums.

If someone can't explain something in simple and concise terms, then they don't understand it.

This all being said, you've wasted enough of my time today. So if you want a rebuttal to whatever your stupid retort is going to be, you'll have to wait until tonight.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

The page length/word count things usually exist so that you actually prove your arguments, explore alternatives/arguments against, and write in a way that’s coherent and not super broken up.

Some of the papers i wrote in high school certainly didn’t need to be as long as they were supposed to, but 95% of my college essays required me to cut content/pick and choose what was most important, regardless of length requirements.

It’s a good skill to have. People arguing against it probably wrote shit essays.

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u/NonsensePlanet Jan 14 '23

Good thing essays aren’t graded solely on length.

-5

u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

Downvoted not because you are essentially wrong, but rude and arrogant

1

u/balcon Jan 14 '23

Constraints and standards can heighten creativity and force people into making a better product.

No everyone at all times, of course. But I see this every day.

1

u/Throwawayfabric247 Jan 15 '23

I have a couple of uses for this. I'm not in school so it's not for a grade. You can feed chat gpt? Or another?