I don’t understand. Are there places where using chatGPT for papers is illegal?
The state where I live explicitly allows it. Only plagiarism is prohibited. But making chatGPT formulate the result of your scientific work, or correct the grammar or improve the style, etc. doesn’t bother anybody.
If you use chatGPT you should still read over it, because it can say something wrong about your results and run a plagiarism tool on it because it could unintentionally do that. So whats the big deal?
If you use chatGPT you should still read over it, because it can say something wrong about your results and run a plagiarism tool on it because it could unintentionally do that. So whats the big deal?
There isnt one. Not that I can see.
At least within a higher level education environment, the problem is who does the critical thinking. If you just offload a complex question to chat gpt and submit the result, you don’t learn anything. One of the purposes of paper-based exercises is to get students thinking about topics and understanding concepts to apply them to other areas.
You are considering it from a student perspective. I’m considering it from a writing and communication/ publishing perspective. I’m a scientist, I think a decent one, but I’m a only a proficient writer and I don’t want to be a good one. Its just not where I want to put my professional focus. However, you can not advance as a scientist without being a ‘good’ writer (and I don’t just mean proficient). I get to offload all kind of shit to chat GPT. I’m even working on some stuff where I can dump in a folder of papers, and have it go through and statistically review all of them to give me a good idea of what the landscape I’m working in looks like.
Things are changing ridiculously fast. But if you are still relying on writing as your pedagogy, you’re leaving a generation of students behind. They will not be able to keep up with people who directly incorporate AI into their workflows.
I’m curious what field you’re in. I’m in computer vision and ML and most conferences have clauses saying not to use ChatGPT or other LLM tools. However, most of the folks I work with see no issue with using LLMs to assist in sentence structure, wording, etc, but they generally don’t approve of using LLMs to write accuracy critical sections (such as background, or results) outside of things like rewording.
I suspect part of the reason conferences are hesitant to allow LLM usage has to do with copyright, since that’s still somewhat of a gray area in the US AFAIK.
I work in remote sensing, AI, and feature detection. However, I work almost exclusively for private industry. Generally in the natural hazard, climate mitigation space.
Lately, I’ve been using it to statistically summarize big batches of publications into tables that I can then analyze statistically (because the LLMs don’t always get it right). I don’t have the time to read like that, so it helps me build an understanding of a space without having to actually read it all.
I think the hand wringing is largely that. I’m not sure its going to matter in 6 months to a year. We’re at the inflection (like pre-alpha go) where its clear that AI can do this thing that was thought to be solely the domain of humans. But it doesn’t necessarily do it better than the best of us. We know how this goes though. It will surpass, and likely by a preposterous margin. Pandoras box is wide open. No closing this up.
This is kind-of silly.
We will 100% be using AI to generate papers now and in the future. If the AI can catch any wrong conclusions or misleading interpretations, that would be helpful.
Not using AI to help you write at this point is you wasting valuable time.
Not using AI to help you write at this point is you wasting valuable time.
Bro WHAT are you smoking. In academia the process of writing the paper is just as important as the paper itself, and in creative writing why would you even bother being a writer if you just had an ai do it for you? Wasting valuable time? The act of writing it is inherently valuable.
Bro gotta get that shit out. Not doing the work to jerk off to the process.
I do a lot of writing of various kinds, and I could not disagree more strongly. Writing is a part of thinking. Thoughts are fuzzy, interconnected, nebulous things, impossible to communicate in their entirety. When you write, the real labor is converting that murky thought-stuff into something precise. It’s not uncommon in writing to have an idea all at once that takes many hours and thousands of words to communicate. How is an LLM supposed to help you with that? The LLM doesn’t know what’s in your head; using it is diluting your thought with statistically generated bullshit. If what you’re trying to communicate can withstand being diluted like that without losing value, then whatever it is probably isn’t meaningfully worth reading. If you use LLMs to help you write stuff, you are wasting everyone else’s time.
How is an LLM supposed to help you with that?
I have it read and review a couple paragraphs of a research article, many many times, to create a distribution of what was likely said in those paragraphs, in a tabular format. I’ll also work with it to create an outline of an idea I’m working on to keep me focused, and help develop my research plan. I’ll then ask it to drill down into each sub-point and give me granular points to focus on. Obviously, I’m steering, but its not too difficult to use it in such a way that it creates a scaffolding for you to work from.
If you use LLMs to help you write stuff, you are wasting everyone else’s time.
If you aren’t using LLMs to help you write stuff, you are wasting your own time.
