Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Please throw all of my comment into whatever LLM you used to respond, Rude. Rude and wrong. > If [...] this paper was actually for an academic conference or journal, then yes! you have committed academic misconduct. This is a surprising perspective given that in many ways I had the same conversation with chatgpt about my work that I might have had with a colleague or a spouse. The biggest difference is that chatgpt…
>This is a surprising perspective given that in many ways I had the same conversation with chatgpt about my work that I might have had with a colleague or a spouse. Yes, it's possible to scoop academic colleagues and steal ideas from spouses. Plagiarism applies there too. >But I don't think we have any consensus as to where the line should be between "acceptable use" and plagerism. Perhaps, but using it to generate i…
I like the idea that lots of novel scientific ideas were really invented by someone's spouse who doesn't work in the field. One day they happened to look over their partner's shoulder on a whim and said "Oh, honey, surely you mean this?" - and thus the hard scientific problem of the day was solved! Maybe that's how software gets written, too? Perhaps we should add people's spouses to the contributor lists for software? I'm sure many engineers talk to their husbands and wives about their work over dinner. It is simply unacceptable how few spouses end up in the contributors list!
I suspect what's really going on here is that we have different ideas of what constitutes "plagiarism". What is your working definition of that term? How much support would my spouse have to give me before I'm ethically required to add them as a coauthor? Would talking about the topic over dinner be enough? What if they read over my work and pointed out a spelling or grammar mistake? Should AI based code assistants be banned outright (since they are trained on opensource code)? Should code assistants be listed as contributors?
For context, I've worked at multiple universities in multiple countries. And I've spent several years teaching. That has involved telling my students where my line for plagerism is. And getting students in trouble when they cross that line. It sounds like by your reckoning I've been doing it all wrong all this time. So please, enlighten us all. What is plagiarism? How much LLM assistance, exactly, is too much in an academic context? And, if you'll indulge my curiosity, how much experience do you have in universities?
(Sadly, I must also acknowledge that I talked to my partner about this comment before posting it. So many obviously stolen ideas - I'm a fraud down to my very bones.)