Chatbots and plagiarism: Will we ‘get over it’?

MICHAEL BUGEJA Iowa Capitol Dispatch

Editor’s Note: This article was published on Feb. 16, 2023.

In 1999, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, told reporters and technology analysts concerned about internet algorithms that people have “zero privacy anyway. Get over it!”

The comment shocked people. With the emergence of ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) — a free online application that dialogues with users — teachers are in “near panic” with concerns about cheating, specifically, plagiarism.

It will take a while for us to get over it. But we will.

When McNealy made his privacy comment, eBay, PayPal and Amazon were in their infancy. Facebook would be founded five years later. Twitter, two years after that.

Google Maps came online in 2005. Street View not only showcased property but also occasionally caught people doing assorted embarrassing things.

In 2007, an attorney complained that a Google van can violate privacy by photographing “you in an embarrassing state of undress, as you close your blinds, for example.”

(Google had caught him smoking, and he was hiding that from his family.)

The public was shocked about Street View for about a year. Then it wore off. People gave up privacy for the convenience of car directions.

Terms of surrender

In 2010, my Iowa State colleague Daniela Dimitrova and I published a book titled “Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and the Implications for Scholarship.” We traced the history of convenience from a caveman’s rock to an influencer’s blog. Communication has four basic features: durability, storage, portability and convenience. An inscribed rock can last for centuries. But you can’t write much on it or easily tote it. Clay tablets, scrolls and books provided more storage and portability.

Then came Internet, the ultimate in convenience. We don’t have to leave our home. We order in, pay bills, stream content and work in pajamas.

People will give up anything for convenience, risking privacy and identity theft.

This was McNealy’s message more than two decades ago.

At the time, artificial intelligence was almost a half century old, making tremendous strides. Between 1957-74, scientists developed algorithms that would lead, ultimately, to ChatGPT and other bots that now write essays and pass law and business exams.

They even fool developers into believing they are sentient.

Take my word

Prose isn’t dead; we just won’t be doing much of it in a variety of jobs. Chatbots have infiltrated the writing professions, customer support, programming, media planning and buying, judicial filings, and consulting.

That last category will impact the pocketbook of many professors fretting that ChatGPT has killed the required term paper.

 See CHATGPT, page 9