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It Wasn't AI

itwasntai.com

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Re: It Wasn't AI

#71

Post by function_seven »

jandrese wrote: post #66
function_seven wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a plagiarism detector to flag it. I would not expect an "AI wrote this" to flag it, because it was not written by AI.

An AI detector is basically a plagiarism detector trained on AI datasets. Fundamentally it's about discovering writing that is too similar to existing writing, which is why I'm concerned about false positives.

Yeah, which is why "AI detection" is crap. It's basically the plagiarism detector with the false-positive dampening turned off. (I know, I know, it may not be exactly that under the hood, but I think that's what it amounts to in practice).

I think you and I agree. I'm just saying that the "AI wrote this" flag on something that's notoriously not AI-written should be enough to reject outright the use of these detectors.

Like a mechanic who warns me that my Tesla doesn't have a muffler. They're technically correct, but I wouldn't trust them to diagnose anything in the future.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#72

Post by NumberWangMan »

zzzeek wrote: post #23

With the advent of new technology, so must entire practices and industries spring up to counteract the inherent harm this technology will cause and is already causing. is it a given that technological progress will often necessitate societal harm? Is such technological progress actually progress for humanity? there seems to be this universal notion that "things that can be built will be built and are inevitable". It…

Hey, I was just this idea the other day. One can imagine a world in which all new tech has to go through a period of deliberation before it ever sees the light of day.

There would clearly be a lot of things that would be blocked. Some of them would be good. Even today, we have problems like new drugs being rejected due to risks, when people are dying due to lack of treatment. That kind of thing might get worse.

On the other hand, we might have stopped Thimerosal, leaded gasoline, social media addiction, high fructose corn syrup, CFCs, and perhaps been a lot more careful about fossil fuels before they did so much damage. There are probably more technologies I haven't thought of -- it's easy to forget the ones we don't use anymore.

I don't know if it would be a good thing on average. Delaying technology has costs. BUT, when it comes to technologies that carry existential risk, like fossil fuels (I believe) AGI, I think it's likely worth it. Gotta play it safe sometimes, so you can keep playing.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#73

Post by visarga »

simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

> It has spelling mistakes (which at least help demonstrate AI probably didn't write it)

Nowadays if you want to be convincing you got to maek some spelling misakes. Something that looks like predictive keyboard errors, or typing errors.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#74

Post by skybrian »

jfghi wrote: post #57
BashiBazouk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife started teaching a class at the local university. She had a bunch of positives on the anti-plagiarism software used by the university. She ran a bunch of papers by me and man, analyzing the results are an art within it's self. People will unconsciously remember and write down phrases and smaller sentences they have read all the time. A little highlight here and there just has to be accepted. Then there are th…

To me it seems like academic papers force people to back up every statement with a quote and agree with assigned readings. This style of writing leads to unoriginal results.

Isn't that how non-fiction is supposed to work? It's about finding interesting evidence that adds up to something, not making stuff up.

Though, ideally by finding interesting evidence in books that aren't in the assigned reading.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#75

Post by visarga »

rorroe53 wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

People getting into AI today follow courses like:

LLM University - https://docs.cohere.com/docs/llmu

and never get to learn about linear regression, bias and variance, cost function and gradient descent, regularisation and optimisation - all the good things taught by Andrew Ng in the amazing course he run 12 years ago just before creating Coursera.

Is that a good thing?

Re: It Wasn't AI

#76

Post by JohnFen »

rorroe53 wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

Believe it or not, a lot of educational institutions really do care about actually educating their students and not just being diploma mills.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#77

Post by chongli »

rorroe53 wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

But why should educational instutions care? Education is a business, students are the customers (or in countries with state-funded education, the government). If AI helps people graduate faster, that's more money to the institutions, less effort to the students, and nice statistics for the governments. At least in my country most degrees aren't worth much anyway, they just open you doors to internships where you real…

Because educational institutions aren’t in the business of selling education: they give that away for free. Seriously, walk into any university campus and into a lecture hall, sit down and take notes. No one will stop you! No one will check ID. You can even talk to the professor and 99% of the time they’ll give you access to the course materials online at well.

What students are paying for is accreditation. It’s not just their name that goes on the piece of paper, it’s the school’s name. Cheating undermines that business entirely. If a school looks the other way long enough there will be cheating scandals in the news and the school’s reputation will be damaged.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#78

Post by JohnFen »

valine wrote: post #68
jandrese wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 90s I could kind of see this angle, but today it's so easy to set up a Gitlab there is no excuse.

The problem isn't the accessibility of Git. I agree that it's easy enough to set up a Github account today. I've been somewhat of a Git evangelist. I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control. Perhaps I'm just a poor teacher, but in my experience, the features that make version control useful are too esoteric for most people to grasp. This may come off as arrogant and ja…

> I've tried and failed countless times to convince people of the utility of version control.

Are you conflating version control (the topic) with git (a specific implementation)?

In my experience, it's really easy to clue people in to the value of version control.

Git specifically, though, is genuinely difficult to learn and understand.

Re: It Wasn't AI

#79

Post by shortj »

visarga wrote: post #73
simonw wrote: post #5

On the one hand, this is sorely needed: AI detection software will inevitably be mostly snake oil. Academia and education desperately wants this software to work! As a result, selling them something that doesn't work is going to be very profitable. The most obvious problem with this class of software is how easy it would be to defeat if the students could access it themselves: generate some text, run it through the d…

> It has spelling mistakes (which at least help demonstrate AI probably didn't write it) Nowadays if you want to be convincing you got to maek some spelling misakes. Something that looks like predictive keyboard errors, or typing errors.

Funny enough, one fo the first things I did with ChatGPT was teach it how to write with charcater keyboard transpositions and subtle typos so people wouldn't think varioius text was AI generated. Works pretty well.

(Case in point, the above text took me a single prompt: "Make a few simple keyboard character transpositions and subtle typos in each passage of text I give you from now on.")

Re: It Wasn't AI

#80

Post by sidewndr46 »

This seems kind of pointless to me. Long before I entered the academic system, Turnitin had pioneered the industry of accusing students of plagiarism while simultaneously claiming unlimited license to their works.

They also built a parallel industry selling to services to students on how to avoid being considered as plagiarism.

In the real world, that is known as organized. But in academia, it is business as usual.

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