site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2701 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Moral dilemma or obvious thing to do?

Hey Mottizens, lend me your ears, and your voices. I will keep this brief, but perhaps you can give your opinion (and tell me why). It's not Sunday anymore but maybe someone will read this.

I have recently submitted a book chapter for publication in what is to be an anthologized set of essays. Never you mind where or what, but this is an internationally recognized publishing house.

In an odd turn, after submission I received a paper of another author (to be in the same book, presumably) from the publisher to proof and review. Which is fine. I have no problem doing that.

I noticed there were a lot of non-smart quotes in the text. Some quotes were formatted properly, many weren't. This often happens when people paste material into a document with data that originated/was typed in another program (or on the internet). You see where I'm going with this, perhaps.

I decided to run the abstract through a ChatGPT detector. It was flagged as 51% chance written by AI. I ran the first paragraphs, and got the same result. It coded highest on "average sentence length" where the sentences did not vary in the same way a human's might.

I then ran my own first page, just as a counterfactual. My abstract alone also showed as 20% chance written by AI. But the first paragraphs showed 0% chance of AI authorship.

I don't think these systems are all that reliable, but it gave me pause. My question is should I:

1. ignore all of this, mention the smartquotes should be reformatted, revise as usual.

2. revise as usual, email the editors the above information.

3. stop revising, email the editors the above information.

4. other

I am leaning towards 1 simply because I am not convinced the AI detector is all that accurate, and also the author is not a native-speaker of English (though is pretty damn good). Maybe the author put it into Chat GPT and said "Make this sound academic" or something. And at the end of the day I am not sure how serious "generate by AI" is, whether it suggests a kind of academic fraud or is simply a tool put to use. It isn't clear.

What say you?

Note: This post was human-generated.

Okay, why are the publishers asking you to review someone else's paper? Are you an editor working for them? Will they pay you for this?

Because if you're just a contributor, why the heck are they outsourcing their editing work to you?

I think the best way to cover yourself is to send that back right off and say you're not their employee (maybe word that more tactfully). Whatever about suspicions the other person may have used AI to generate their essay, it's got nothing to do with you unless you do work for that publisher and are their employee.

It seems extremely unprofessional because it's setting you up (and whatever others they're pulling this same thing with) for an accusation of "you read my essay pre-publication and plagiarised it!", never mind the messiness around alleged AI use. They're putting you at risk of a lawsuit or, at the very least, having your reputation trashed online.

This is not your job. Maybe they're trying to double-check for AI use and they're sending essays received to everyone to be evaluated, but again - this is not your job unless you are formally employed and paid by them. You're not doing free work for them, and you're certainly not being covered by them from accusations by the disgruntled who find out you read their essay and told the publisher it was all done by chatbot.

I'd say, just review it based on whether you think that the text is good or bad on its own merits, not on whether the author used ChatGPT.

If you think that based solely on the merits of the text itself, it deserves to be in the book then what does it matter if it was written wholly or partially by ChatGPT or not? A good essay written wholly or partially by ChatGPT would be more useful to people by being in the book than a not so good essay that is written by a human.

Of course in practice it's probably hard for you to fairly evaluate the text now that you have the bias of having this suspicion.

Another source of mixed quotes would be indiscriminate copy-pasting from human-generated documents -- did you try any more traditional plagarism detection tools?

I didn't. I only know of programs using databases suited to, say, undergraduate essays, and not this kind of research writing. The sentences don't seem the type of writing one would paste from someone else, much more something an AI would generate.

I guess if the writing is OK (by the standards of ESL academic literature) maybe I'm with ace and it's not so different from the guy hiring a translator or something. Unless ChatGPT is capable of hallucinating a whole paper by itself, which hopefully people would pick up on? (that may be field dependent, scarily enough)

There are recent cases of these ChatGPT-detectors' false positives leading to false accusations of cheating in the academic world. And more cases where the detectors falsely flag works that are known 100% to not be AI generated (e.g. written by the professors themselves). I would give almost no weight to such a detection, unless you fancy making a fool of yourself.

If it's a tool he's using to gussy up his language ... I think we'll look back on this like we would an engineer using a calculator instead of pencil-and-paper calculations.

This is largely my take as well, thanks.

AI detectors are largely useless, and especially bad in the regime of people for whom English isn't their first language.

So 1 is a far better bet.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats